Abstract
Rising global temperatures will increase the number of extreme weather events, creating new challenges for cities around the world. Archaeological research on the destruction and subsequent reoccupation of ancient cities has the potential to reveal geological and social dynamics that have historically contributed to making urban settings resilient to these extreme weather events. Using a combination of archaeological and geological methods, we examine how extreme flood events at Kaifeng, a former capital of dynastic China, have shaped the city’s urban resilience. Specifically, we focus on an extreme Yellow River flood event in AD 1642 that historical records suggest killed around 300,000 people living in Kaifeng. Our recent archaeological excavations have discovered compelling geological and archaeological evidence that corroborates these documents, revealing that the AD 1642 Yellow River flood destroyed Kaifeng’s inner city, entombing the city and its inhabitants within meters of silt and clay. We argue that the AD 1642 flood was extraordinarily catastrophic because Kaifeng’s city walls only partly collapsed, entrapping most of the flood waters within the city. Both the geology of the Yellow River floods as well as the socio-political context of Kaifeng shaped the city’s resilience to extreme flood events.
Highlights
As cities face growing environmental uncertainties brought on by human-induced climate change, scientists are becoming increasingly interested in the factors that make cities resilient to natural hazards[1,2,3]
The archaeological, historical, and sedimentary data recovered from Kaifeng provide enough information to tentatively reconstruct the fluvial dynamics of the AD 1642 flood using paleohydraulic methods (Fig. 9a)
Our geoarchaeological investigations at Kaifeng suggest that urban resilience is not static but instead varies depending on the magnitude and type of natural hazard, the built landscape, as well as the city’s social institutions
Summary
As cities face growing environmental uncertainties brought on by human-induced climate change, scientists are becoming increasingly interested in the factors that make cities resilient to natural hazards[1,2,3]. Despite Kaifeng’s political and economic importance, the Yellow River has flooded Kaifeng around 40 times over the past 3000 years. These frequent floods have left behind meters of alluvium mixed with urban debris, creating a 20 m thick archaeological sequence that dates from the Bronze Age Kaifeng’s archaeological record contains ample evidence of urban destruction and renewal as a result of this flood event and many others, making it an ideal location to start to examine the geological and social components of urban resilience in relation to the Yellow River[16,17,18]. We present archaeological evidence, radiocarbon dates, and geological data from excavations at excavations at Xinzhengmen, one of the western gates of the Song dynasty (AD 960-1128) city, and several Ming dynasty (AD 1368-1642) “princely houses” known as Wangfu, to provide insights into the social and natural factors that contributed to both the destruction and subsequent recovery of Kaifeng after this devastating flood event
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