Evidence for Earthquake Damage on Roman Buildings in Cologne, Germany

Abstract

Archaeoseismology has developed as an offshoot of paleoseismology in the last two decades. Most of the work has been done at sites in the Mediterranean region, where high seismicity exists and numerous archaeological sites are located (Stiros and Jones, 1996). Descriptions of archaeoseismological surveys can be found in Ambraseys (1971), Stiros (1988), Nur and Ron (1996), Galadini and Galli (1999) and Guidoboni et al. (2000). Depending on the extent of the building history in an area, archaeoseismology can extend the earthquake record significantly beyond historical times even without the existence of supportive evidence such as surface faulting. Due to tremendous building activity during the northward extension of the Roman empire in the last century B.C. and the first century A.D., some well preserved buildings from this period exist in central Europe. The city of Cologne has a building history of ca. 2,000 years. The first settlements by the tribe of the Ubians on the left bank of the Rhine River date to sometime after 38 B.C., although the Oppidum Ubiorum, the later city itself, was founded in the years around the birth of Christ (earliest dendrodate A.D. 4). During the Roman period, building activity boomed. In the year A.D. 50, Agrippina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, made her birth town a colony with the name Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (CCAA). Inhabitants became Roman citizens by this act. The name “Claudia”, goes back to the family of the ruling emperors, the Claudians, and “Ara” refers to Ara Ubiorum, the name of the main altar of the Germanic province, the germania inferior (La Baume, 1980). The settlement (Gechter and Schutte, 2000) was located on a plateau of 1 km2 of the Lower Terrace, ca. 14 m to 16 m above the Rhine River and safely above the level of flooding. To …