NATURAL HAZARDS AND THE DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL RECORD

Since 2004 archaeological excavations have been underway in the Yenikapı district of Istanbul, Turkey, at the site of Constantinople’s Byzantine harbor. This busy port in what was once the capital of the eastern Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires has yielded a wealth of archaeological data in the largest on-going excavation the city has ever seen. Of particular importance in resolving chronological development at the site are some 2000 wood samples (primarily Quercus sp.) collected and analyzed by members of the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory. The majority of these samples consist of posts from docks and other structures from a variety of sequential stratigraphic contexts dating to the first millennium AD. One stratigraphic unit stands out as unusual. It is characterized by a mixture of terrestrial and marine debris with indicators of near-instantaneous deposition and has been hypothesized to result from a tsunami following one of the earthquakes which are so prevalent in the North Anatolian fault zone. Here we demonstrate how the record derived from multiple tree-ring series can be used to further elucidate the timing and impact of this event.