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Archeoseismology

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Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering

Synonyms

Archeological seismicity; Earthquake archeology; Seismic archeology

Introduction

In 1991 an international conference was held in Athens (Greece), marking the beginning of the modern research field of archeoseismology, described as “the study of ancient earthquakes from the complementary standpoints of their social, cultural, historical and physical effect” (Stiros and Jones 1996). Besides the term archeoseismology, also the term seismic archeology was introduced to emphasize the use of archeological methods in the quest to better understand the effects of earthquakes on historical buildings and archeological remains. Moreover, in analogy with historical seismicity, also the term archeological seismicity was suggested.

Archeoseismology can thus be defined as the interdisciplinary study of ancient earthquakes through evidence in the archeological record, such as destruction layers, structural damage to man-made constructions, cultural piercing features, indications of repairs,...

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Correspondence to Manuel Sintubin .

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Sintubin, M. (2015). Archeoseismology. In: Beer, M., Kougioumtzoglou, I.A., Patelli, E., Au, SK. (eds) Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35344-4_29

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