126-7 Reconstructing Coastal Change and Submerged Landscapes: Geoarchaeological Insights from Caesarea, Israel

Session: Geoarchaeology of Sites to Landscapes: Current Research on Long-Term Water and Soil Management and Maladaptation, Part II

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Coastal zones are inherently dynamic, shaped by the interplay of sediment deposition, erosion, sea-level fluctuations, shoreline retreat, and episodic events, such as storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis. These processes, operating over diverse spatial and temporal scales, complicate efforts to reconstruct paleoshorelines and determine the original extent and context of coastal archaeological sites. However, integrating geomorphological and sedimentological evidence with in situ archaeological data offers a powerful framework for tracing landscape evolution and human responses to environmental change. This study presents a geoarchaeological investigation of a partially submerged Roman-era (~2,000 years old) site at Caesarea on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Stratigraphic and sedimentological data derived from a geophysical survey and a sediment core collected at a depth of 4.0 m, approximately 200 m offshore within a shallow bay, are integrated with observations from the coastal archaeological record and from an adjacent underwater excavation area located at 10.0 m deep, roughly 400 m offshore, near the outflow of a Roman sewer system. While the sediment core reveals recent (past few centuries) marine sands immediately overlying fine-grained terrestrial sediments dated to approximately 6,000-12,000 BCE, the offshore excavation area contains a near-continuous preserved sequence of marine sands and event horizons dating from the Roman Period to the present. Together, these datasets provide a high-resolution view of mid- to late-Holocene coastal dynamics, shedding light on the relative location of the coastline during the site’s occupation—with the now-submerged coring location likely situated within the breaker zone ~2,000 years ago, and on more recent, rapid submergence of the area. This study offers critical insights into the coastal changes that have affected this shoreline over the past few millennia and highlights the value of integrated geoarchaeological approaches in reconstructing past coastal environments.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-10920

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