Event CH3-E2 - Modeled Age 505-593 CE
At the
deltaic site of Bet Zeyda (aka Beteiha), just north of the
Sea of Galilee (aka Lake Kinneret),
three-dimensional paleoseismic investigations
were conducted by multiple researchers over a number
of years using numerous trenches. The studies
examined a series of ~E–W-oriented
paleo-channels intersected and
sinistrally displaced by the ~N–S-trending
active Jordan Gorge Fault, producing a detailed
chronology of fault activity over roughly the past
2,000 years, based on
radiocarbon dating of
detrital charcoal. Once outliers are
excluded, this material appears to have a
residence time of decades rather than
centuries (e.g. see
Marco et al., 2005:200). Results indicate that
seismic events were more frequent and produced
greater fault slip during the first millennium CE
than in the second, suggesting the region may be
approaching another period of heightened seismic
activity.
Wechsler et al. (2014:9) report that Event CH3-E2 was
identified and dated on both walls of fault-perpendicular
Trench T45, where
strata were folded, fault-displaced, and
tilted westward by as much as 30°. Above these deformed
layers, an
unconformity truncates the earlier deposition,
and undeformed unit 375 overlies this surface. Because
“both the deformed strata and secondary
fault strands are capped by unit 375,”
Wechsler et al. (2014:9) inferred “this contact [the
unconformity] to be the event horizon.”
Wechsler et al. (2018:Table 3) further examined this
event using a
Bayesian model of radiocarbon ages, dating it
to 505–593 CE.
Wechsler et al. (2014:214) reported that the age of
CH3-E2 is “well constrained by 14C ages that
date the event to the sixth century CE.”
Wechsler et al. (2018:Table 3) also estimated that the
event produced ~1.2 m of
left-lateral displacement.
