| The Near East and eastern Mediterranean region is an ideal location to utilize archaeological sites to conduct paleoseismic investigations due to the long cultural history and detailed historical record and the wealth of ancient sites located near a major plate boundary. Archaeological and paleoseismic data collected from the archaeological site of Qasr Tilah in Jordan suggests that four ground-rupturing earthquakes occurred between the 7th and 19th centuries along the northern Wadi Araba fault south of the Dead Sea. When correlated with major historical earthquake catalogs, the most likely dates for these four events are A.D. 661, 873, 1068, and 1546. However, historical records report large earthquakes in the Wadi Araba in 1212, 1293 and 1458, which are not identified in trench A.7, and may have occurred on either the Dead Sea fault segment or the southern Wadi Araba fault segment south of Jebel Ar-Risha. |
