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Geoarchaeological evidence for dredging in Tyre's ancient harbour, Levant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Nick Marriner  and
Christophe Morhange
Nick Marriner
Affiliation:
CEREGE, CNRS UMR 6635, Université de Provence, Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, Cedex 04, France
Christophe Morhange*
Affiliation:
CEREGE, CNRS UMR 6635, Université de Provence, Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence, Cedex 04, France
*
*Corresponding author. nick.marriner@wanadoo.fr (N. Marriner),E-mail address:morhange@cerege.fr(C. Morhange).
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Abstract

Chrono-stratigraphic data from Tyre's ancient northern harbour delineate extensive dredging practices during the Greco-Roman and Byzantine periods. Radiocarbon dates from four cores consistently cluster between ca. 500 B.C. and 1000 A.D. and indicate rapid rates of sedimentation in the basin, namely ∼10 mm/yr during the Greco-Roman and Byzantine periods, compared to 0.5–1 mm/yr for the period 6000–4000 B.C. Absence of strata between 4000 B.C. and 500 B.C. is not consistent with a natural base-level sediment sink and cannot be interpreted as a depositional hiatus in the high-stand systems tract. Ancient dredging is further corroborated by persistent age-depth inversions within the fine-grained harbour facies. These data support removal of Middle Bronze Age to Persian period sediment strata, with deliberate overdeepening of the harbour bottom by Greco-Roman and Byzantine societies.

Keywords

GeoarchaeologyGeochronologyStratigraphyCoastal geomorphologyDredgingAncient harbourPhoeniciaMediterranean
Type
Short Paper
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 164 - 171
Copyright
University of Washington

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