scholarly journals Geophysical Surveys at Khirbat Faynan, an Ancient Mound Site in Southern Jordan

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Novo ◽  
Matthew L. Vincent ◽  
Thomas E. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Survey Methods ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Copper Ore ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Data Processing Software ◽  
Sampling Protocols ◽  
Geophysical Surveys ◽  
Settlement Site ◽  
Geophysical Survey Methods

Faynan in Jordan contains the largest copper ore resource zone in the southern Levant (Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, and the Sinai Peninsula). Located 50 km southeast of the Dead Sea, it is home to one of the world’s best-preserved ancient mining and metallurgy districts encompassing an area of ca. 400 km2. During the past three decades, archaeologists have carried out numerous excavations and surveys recording hundreds of mines and sites related to metallurgical activities that span the past 10 millennia. Khirbat Faynan (Biblical Punon), is situated in the main Faynan Valley and is the largest (ca. 15 ha) settlement site in the region and has remained unexcavated until 2011. As Jordan’s most southern mound site with indications of widespread ancient architecture, we employed a suite of noninvasive geophysical survey methods to identify areas suitable for excavation. Earlier geophysical surveys were carried out in the Faynan region by our team in the late 1990s when only EMI (electromagnetic induction) proved successful, but with relatively poor resolution. As reported here, by 2011, improvements in data processing software and 3D ERT (electrical resistivity tomography) sampling protocols made it possible to greatly improve the application of noninvasive geophysical surveying in this hyperarid zone.

Orchids of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank, Palestine)

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. e72120
Author(s):  
Julius Pahl ◽  
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
New Records ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Distribution Patterns ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Using Data

Literature data and new records of members of the orchid family (Orchidaceae) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories were reviewed and updated with field data. Using data from the Palestine Museum of Natural History (PMNH), data from fellow botanists, and the Biodiversity databases (BioGIS and GBIF), the distribution patterns were analyzed with the QGIS package. Twenty-three taxa of eight genera were found in this preliminary study. For two species, no recent data from the last 20 years were available and in some cases likely declined due to human activity. Most species are from the Mediterranean phytogeographical zone, Epipactis veratrifolia Boiss. & Hohen was found in the Sudanian-Ethiopian zone (Dead Sea valley). The majority of the species found prefer semi-open shrublands (garrigue). Nine species had fewer than 20 records overall. Trends observed from the historical data, and current spatial data revealed major threats, including habitat fragmentation, urbanization, intensification of agricultural land use, afforestation and reduced precipitation due to global warming. We noted the proximity to thorny shrubs in many species indicating pressure by grazing animals during field visits. As recent data is scarce, surveys of sites where rare species have been encountered in the past are recommended, and measures to protect vulnerable populations are discussed.

Israel and Palestine

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franck Salameh
Keyword(s):  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Single State ◽  
East And West ◽  
Palestinian Literature

This chapter examines the works of Arab and Israeli authors who celebrate diversity, humanity, and humanism. These include Anglo-Palestinian novelist Samir el-Youssef (b. 1965), Fawaz Turki (b. 1940), and polyglot Israeli essayist Jacqueline Kahanoff (1917–79). Fawaz Turki and Samir el-Youssef, although outside the circle of those considered paragons of Palestinian literature, are exquisite—albeit contrasting—representatives of the Palestinian condition and the Palestinians' intellectual trajectories of the past fifty years. Rather than being representatives of a single state, they are mostly ensconced in a state of liminality, straddling Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other areas of dispersion, both East and West. Kahanoff's relevance is that her work, her thought, and the intellectual school to which she belonged are being excavated, rehabilitated, and valorized by both Israelis and Palestinians today.

scholarly journals Implications of some early Jewish sources for estimates of earthquake hazardin the Holy Land

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Karcz
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Seismic Origin ◽  
The Impact

For the past two millennia the Holy Land was under the yoke of successive invaders and oppressors, not a fertile ground for growth of historiographic traditions. Consequently, earthquake cataloguers had to rely largely on chronicles and texts written at distant administrative and cultural centers of the day, where earthquake destruction suffered by a culturally and economically depressed province may have been overshadowed by damage in more important parts of the empire. On this assumption, and aided by an implicit notion that the lands bounded by the Dead Sea Rift and Anatolian Fault systems are seismically contiguous, early cataloguers often extended the impact of earthquakes documented in nearby East Mediterranean countries to the Holy Land. Once published, such reports of supposed destructive intensities in Israel were used by Judaic scholars and archaeologists to date poorly defined, often metaphoric, literary seismic echoes, and to justify assigning seismic origin to equivocal signs of damage, asymmetry, or abandonment at archaeological sites of corresponding age. The spread of damage and intensity portraits are therefore enhanced and distorted, and so is their application in palaeoseismic analysis. Four test cases are presented, illustrating the use and misuse of local Judaic sources in identifying destructive intensities supposedly generated in the Holy Land by earthquakes of 92 B.C., 64 B.C. and 31 B.C., and in postulating a regional seismic catastrophe in 749 A.D..

scholarly journals The earthquake of 1 January 1837 in Southern Lebanon and N orthern Israel

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
N. N. Ambraseys
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Transform Fault ◽  
Earthquake Catalogues ◽  
Dead Sea Transform ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fault Systems ◽  
Heavy Damage

All of our 20th-century information for the Levant Fracture and Dead Sea transform fault systems is for a qui- escent period in the seismicity. This is apparent when we consider earlier events which show that infi.equent earthquakes have occurred in the past along this system, an important consideration for the assessment of haz- ard and tectonics of the Middle East. One of these events was the earthquake of 1837 which caused heavy damage in Northem Israel and Southem Lebanon. This earthquake was a much larger event than earthquake catalogues indicate. We reckon it was a shallow, probably multiple event of magnitude greater than 7.0.

RADIOCARBON RESERVOIR AGES IN THE HOLOCENE DEAD SEA

Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1453-1473
Author(s):  
Nurit Weber ◽  
Boaz Lazar ◽  
Ofra Stern ◽  
George Burr ◽  
Ittai Gavrieli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dissolved Inorganic Carbon ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
Radiocarbon Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Continuous Deposition

ABSTRACTThe sources and fate of radiocarbon (14C) in the Dead Sea hypersaline solution are evaluated with 14C measurements in organic debris and primary aragonite collected from exposures of the Holocene Ze’elim Formation. The reservoir age (RA) is defined as the difference between the radiocarbon age of the aragonite at time of its precipitation (representing lakeʼs dissolved inorganic carbon [DIC]) and the age of contemporaneous organic debris (representing atmospheric radiocarbon). Evaluation of the data for the past 6000 yr from Dead Sea sediments reveal that the lakeʼs RA decreased from 2890 yr at 6 cal kyr BP to 2300 yr at present. The RA lies at ~2400 yr during the past 3000 yr, when the lake was characterized by continuous deposition of primary aragonite, which implies a continuous supply of freshwater-bicarbonate into the lake. This process reflects the overall stability of the hydrological-climate conditions in the lakeʼs watershed during the late Holocene where bicarbonate originated from dissolution of the surface cover in the watershed that was transported to the Dead Sea by the freshwater runoff. An excellent correlation (R2=0.98) exists between aragonite ages and contemporaneous organic debris, allowing the estimation of ages of various primary deposits where organic debris are not available.

Use of a National Library: A Survey of Readers in the Humanities and Social Sciences Reading Rooms of the British Library

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Cranfield ◽  
Joe Hellowell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Seasonal Variations ◽  
Questionnaire Survey ◽  
Survey Methods ◽  
Academic Staff ◽  
British Library ◽  
National Library ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Libraries

A questionnaire survey was carried out in the humanities reading rooms of the British Library one day each month from September 1990 to August 1991 with the aim of providing information of help in planning services, particularly at the new building in St Pancras. Readers were asked about their occupations, nationalities, the location of the academic institutions to which they were affiliated, the reasons for and frequency of their visits etc. 65% of readers were academic staff or students, and 33% lived outside the UK; 31% said they had visited the library over 50 times in the past year. The results were compared, where appropriate, with earlier surveys in 1968 and 1977. These comparisons highlighted significant seasonal variations in patterns of usage. It was not possible to compare the results with those from surveys by other national libraries, because of widely differing survey methods and content of reports.

SOME RECENT ADVANCES IN OFFSHORE REGIONAL RECONNAISSANCE GEOPHYSICAL SURVEY METHODS

1967 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
K. R. Vale
Keyword(s):  
Phase Measurement ◽  
Survey Methods ◽  
Geophysical Methods ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Simultaneous Recording ◽  
Navigation Systems ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Geophysical Survey Methods

Traditional geophysical methods in use offshore include the airborne magnetometer, underwater gravity meter, and seismic reflection with 24-channel recording and large explosive energy source. Navigation is by range-range and hyperbolic phase-comparison radio systems set up as local networks. Other methods now being used include towed magnetometer, surface gravity meter, and automatic continuous seismic profilers, and all three methods can be used for simultaneous recording from a single recording boat. Navigation systems not requiring local networks include satellite radio doppler, very low frequency phase measurement and sonar doppler devices. These may be used word-wide and 24 hours per day. A single recording boat may thus be virtually self-sufficient. The Bureau of Mineral Resources plans a survey for 1967 that will use a number of these geophysical methods and navigation aids.

Subsurface investigation of the Terrace of the Elephants in the Angkor world heritage site using geophysical survey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwangwu Lee ◽  
Kiju Kim ◽  
Byungsuk Park ◽  
Wooseok Kim ◽  
Jaehyeung Jeoung
Keyword(s):  
Survey Methods ◽  
Underground Water ◽  
Geophysical Survey ◽  
World Heritage Site ◽  
Seismic Survey ◽  
Resistivity Tomography ◽  
Seismic Surveys ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Subsurface Investigation ◽  
Geophysical Survey Methods

<p>Geophysical survey methods are widely applied into not only underground water exploration and environmental pollution & civil engineering fields of the ground, but also in the archeological field such as exploration of the historic remains. The electrical resistivity tomography(ERT) and seismic surveys were conducted to determine the distribution of underground around the terrace of the elephants. ERT survey was conducted to investigate the natural geological distribution and artificial ground around the terrace of the elephants and seismic survey was conducted to find out the velocity distribution of the terrace of the elephants. ERT resulted in a difference in the traces of artificial ground composition around natural ground and terrace of the elephants. Geophysical survey could be used to infer the range and purpose of the underground composition of historic remains (KOICA Project Number: 2019-00065).</p>

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