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

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 similar to 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. (c) 2005 University of Washington. All rights reserved.