Archaeoseismology in the Atalanti Region, Central Mainland Greece

Identifying earthquakes as benchmarkers in archaeological stratigraphies is part of an old tradition of site and excavation interpretation dating back to the early archaeologists of the 19th century. In the past two decades a surge of research in seismology and seismic hazard led to increased interest from geologists for the potential of archaeologically derived seismic information to seismic research. The subject of this work is, therefore, a study of archaeological remains as a proxy data source for earthquake geology and palaeoseismology. This was carried out through an examination of the previous work (both archaeological and geological). Based on the findings of the methodological and theoretical discussion an alternative to the universal identification criteria approach is proposed by the author. This advocates a wholly interdisciplinary approach and is further explored with the application of a Geographical Information System (GIS) as a means to full integration of the disparate data sets, i.e. numerical and textual. The proposed method is tested by means of its application to two representative case studies; the inland (settlement) site of Kyparissi and the coastal site of Alai in Atalanti, central mainland Greece. In theprocess of testing the working hypothesis a regional database of information is constructed, which although an integral part of the research carried out for this work, can stand alone as a reference database.