Evidence for ground-rupturing earthquakes on the Northern Wadi Araba fault at the archaeological site of Qasr Tilah, Dead Sea Transform fault system, Jordan

Abstract

The archaeological site of Qasr Tilah, in the Wadi Araba, Jordan is located on the northern Wadi Araba fault segment of the Dead Sea Transform. The site contains a Roman-period fort, a late Byzantine–Early Umayyad birkeh (water reservoir) and aqueduct, and agricultural fields. The birkeh and aqueduct are left-laterally offset by coseismic slip across the northern Wadi Araba fault. Using paleoseismic and archaeological evidence collected from a trench excavated across the fault zone, we identified evidence for four ground-rupturing earthquakes. Radiocarbon dating from key stratigraphic horizons and relative dating using potsherds constrains the dates of the four earthquakes from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries. Individual earthquakes were dated to the seventh, ninth and eleventh centuries. The fault strand that slipped during the most recent event (MRE) extends to just below the modern ground surface and juxtaposes alluvial-fan sediments that lack in datable material with the modern ground surface, thus preventing us from dating the MRE except to constrain the event to post-eleventh century. These data suggest that the historical earthquakes of 634 or 659/660, 873, 1068, and 1546 probably ruptured this fault segment.