Human Ecology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9985-y

Earthquakes as the Quintessential SCE: Methodology

and Societal Resilience
Lee Mordechai 1 & Jordan Pickett 2

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
This paper focuses on earthquakes as the most frequent type of SCE (short-term cataclysmic event) with signatures in the three
main sources used to reconstruct the premodern environment, namely historical records, archaeological findings, and
paleoclimate proxies. We examine methodological issues in archaeoseismology (including earthquake catalogs, statistics, and
the measurement of societal resilience to earthquakes in premodern societies in the eastern Mediterranean), before investigating
societal earthquake response in the region. The behavior of different groups within these societies, such as the central government
or local elites, is assessed in this context. The regenerative or adaptive aspects of seismic events are demonstrated with consid-
eration of their archaeological footprints. This paper concludes that complex societies in the Eastern Mediterranean during the
past two millennia were largely resilient to earthquakes at the state-level, though local effects on the aspect and character of urban
settlement could be more pronounced.

Keywords Earthquakes . Eastern Mediterranean . Byzantine empire . Natural hazards . Disasters short-term cataclismic event
(SCE)

Introduction: Earthquakes as SCEs (Rodríguez-Pascua et al. 2010). Subsequent secondary effects

As shown in the previous contribution in this issue, earth-
quakes combine several key criteria for analyzing the response
of a complex premodern society to short-term cataclysmic
events (SCEs). These complex occurrences trigger a chain of
events that affect human communities (also Cuny 1983: 36–
61), and which appear in the three available types of sources –
historical, archaeological, and scientific proxies. Following
the immediate geological effects of earthquakes such as
tremors and fissures, soil liquefaction and landslides, ground
failure and rupture or horizontal displacement along the strike
of a fault, the immediate or primary social effects of earth-
quakes are human casualties that result from attendant fires
and structural damage to buildings and infrastructure
* Lee Mordechai
lmordech@princeton.edu
* Jordan Pickett
pickett.jordan@gmail.com
1
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
2
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
may include food shortages, as survivors tend to immediate
needs and have less time to tend to fields, as well as migration,
when survivors decide to relocate and rebuild elsewhere.
Additional secondary effects include sharp declines in living
standards, sanitation, and nutrition, which together foster the
spread of epidemics and thereby further weaken resident pop-
ulations. Localized civil unrest near epicenters or locations
affected by migration may also flare up alongside shortages
of basic resources such as food and shelter. Coincident with
these secondary effects are the local organization of search
and rescue efforts, as well as the provision of aid in the form
of damage assessment, cash, and the beginnings of repair ef-
forts. In the worst cases, the combination of negative primary
and secondary effects can create a vicious cycle that contrib-
utes to tertiary effects beyond the mere devastation of housing
and infrastructure, including the attenuation of pre-existing
negative social dynamics such as segmentation or weakened
social institutions. In such circumstances, earthquakes may act
as trigger events that promote long-term changes in the char-
acter and pattern of settlements at local and regional scales.
The amount of evidence for premodern earthquakes is min-
iscule, rarely more than a few lines in a historical text, with few
or no details about what we might consider as evidence for

societal resilience to them, or even for the veracity of an event.
Nevertheless, those earthquakes that are well-attested and con-
firmed by the combination of types of independent sources
historical sources, scientific data, and archaeological evidence
are better understood than SCEs of other categories.
Since these limitations and advantages have far-reaching
consequences, we begin by examining the nature of the sur-
viving evidence and the catalogs that aggregate it. We use the
trifecta of historical, scientific, and archaeological evidence
that survives from a select few premodern Mediterranean
earthquakes to suggest how historical societies in the region
responded to earthquakes, which may be considered in turn as
representative of the broader category of SCEs. In an adden-
dum, we also demonstrate how the lack of consistent data
from historical sources, as compiled in earthquakes, prevents
the use of statistics to reveal meaningful insights into past
societal resilience to earthquakes.
Earthquakes in Premodern Societies
Ancient and medieval thinkers were well aware of earth-
quakes as a distinct phenomenon and category of catastrophic
event (Öser 1992 and Guidoboni 1994: 42–54). Greek
thinkers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE) developed theories
to explain earthquakes, using at least some direct observations
of nature (Missiakoulis 2008). Their Roman successors such
as Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) and Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE)
presented past ideas while sometimes describing contempo-
rary seismic events (Pliny the Elder 2014: 2.81–86; Seneca
2014: 6; Williams 2006). Late Antiquity brought supernatural
or religious explanations to the forefront, which alternately
supplemented or discredited early scientific explanations. A
few thinkers, such as a late fourth-century bishop of Brescia,
went so far as to claim that those who believed earthquakes
were natural phenomena were heretics (Philastrius 1898: 61.
Heresy 102). Other contemporaries, however, attempted to
better understand seismic effects through experiment. The en-
gineer Anthemius of Tralles (fl. mid-sixth century CE), for
instance, built a large steam-based shaking mechanism
(Agathias 1975: 5.7–8). Medieval Arab thinkers such as ibn
Sina (also known as Avicenna, 980–1037 CE) or ibn Rushd
(also called Averroes, 1126–1198 CE), who would later hold
great influence on Western philosophers, continued to rework
ancient Aristotelian theories emphasizing natural causes.
Europeans moved more fully towards empirical observation
only in early modern times, when scholars began to propose
and discuss additional interpretations, including the idea that
earthquakes were the result of underground electrical shocks.
The modern tectonic theory of earthquakes developed over the
early-mid twentieth century (Guidoboni and Ebel 2009:147–
186).
Hum Ecol
Premodern theories had few practical applications. Some
ancient philosophers were believed to be able to predict earth-
quakes as holy men (Pliny the Elder 2014: 2.81). The exis-
tence of seismic ‘warning devices’ has been postulated for
Roman times, but the argument is not convincing and in any
case the devices would have recorded earthquakes rather than
predict them (Guidoboni 1994:48–49). The lack of an effec-
tive means for earthquake prediction was therefore as acute in
the past as it is today, requiring a substantial societal response
after the event.
The Trifecta: Historical, Scientific,
and Archaeological Evidence for Earthquakes
Earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean have been studied
more, on average, than most other SCEs, especially insofar as
such studies have provided assessments of regional seismicity
to contemporary policy-makers. These efforts have resulted in
important collaborative catalogs of historical seismic events
(e.g. Guidoboni 1994; Guidoboni and Comastri 2005;
Ambraseys et al. 2005; Ambraseys 2009) as well as hand-
books dedicated to these issues (Guidoboni and Ebel 2009;
Sintubin 2010).
The main evidence for premodern earthquakes are the sur-
viving textual accounts in primary source authors. Where pos-
sible, such textual accounts are corroborated with archaeolog-
ical and scientific data. This trifecta approach has proven ef-
fective in ameliorating some of the shortcomings in all three
types of evidence. Such problems include conclusively iden-
tifying and dating earthquake events with their concrete ef-
fects, partially as a result of equifinality, the creation of simi-
larly destructive results from distinct destructive causes
(Marco 2008). The combination of historical and archaeolog-
ical data has also, however, created unfortunate opportunities
for circular reasoning in scholarship, whereby historians refer
to an earthquake in textual sources that is then adduced by
archaeologists for the interpretation of destruction stratigraphy
at a site, before its unwarranted and repetitious deployment by
subsequent historians as evidence for one or another earth-
quake. In areas especially prone to seismic activity, such as
the Dead Sea/Jordan rift valley or Anatolia, significant cau-
tions are warranted, both in the attribution of a seismic cause
to destruction layers, and in the distinction of one particular
earthquake among many (Rodríguez-Pascua et al. 2010).
Structural damage to buildings with consequent loss of life
is the most common and immediate effects of seismic activity
(Rodríguez-Pascua et al. 2010). A combination of archaeolog-
ical data and scientific tests is required to distinguish between
seismically-induced structural damage and non-seismic de-
struction (Stiros and Jones 1996; Ambraseys 2006;
Rathmayr 2016). Among building materials, mudbrick or ado-
be is the most vulnerable to seismic damage: mudbrick was
Hum Ecol
highly typical in domestic or village construction throughout
the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levantin the Eastern
Mediterranean (e.g. Baird 2004; see Sayın et al. 2013 for
modern comparatives). Clay, brick and stone are also vulner-
able, while wood buildings tend to be more resistant to the
tensile and compressive forces exerted by seismic events
(Doğangün et al. 2006). Each of these materials may exhibit
different types of archaeologically recognizable damage after
seismic events, depending on their distance from the epicenter
of a seismic event and its intensity, as well as local bedrock
and soil conditions (Guidoboni and Ebel 2009: 366–371;
Rodríguez-Pascua et al. 2010).
Ambraseys (2006) used field observations throughout the
Eastern Mediterranean to argue that most local and especially
domestic structures can be damaged or destroyed after even
minor seismic events. The variability in earthquake effects can
be explained, at least in part, by differences in building prac-
tices. The main risk factors are poorly-produced construction
materials, inadequate load-bearing elements, asymmetrical
buildings, construction defects associated with haste and
underfunding, as well as the combination of the above in
sub-standard constructions clustered in dense neighborhoods
(Green 2008).
Besides textual sources and archaeology, contemporary
landscapes also preserve scientific or paleoseismic data in
the form of observable fault deformation, including fissures
and uplifts, as well as changes to watercourses and coastlines
(Valensise and Guidoboni 2000). These changes arguably pro-
duce effects that allow scholars to measure historical earth-
quake intensity independently of both the non-instrumental
earthquake intensity measurement scales and our historical
sources, whose reliability is often questionable (Ambraseys
2009: 52–58). Such effects on the natural environment can,
however, vary depending on its status quo ante (Guidoboni
and Ebel 2009: 393–394).
In addition to the direct effects of geological deformation,
recent studies have also drawn attention to speleothem and
dendrochronological evidence which have only rarely been
used by historians and archaeologists for the assessment of
historical earthquakes. In such cases, the characteristics of
speleothem growth or shifts in their growth axes have been
adduced as sources of information for historical earthquakes’
chronology and intensity (Lemeille et al. 1999; Lacave et al.
2004; Kagan et al. 2005; Panno et al. 2009). Subsequent stud-
ies have suggested correlations between speleothem and liter-
ary evidence which may be of use for dating historical seismic
events (Akgöz and Eren 2015). These approaches have con-
siderable potential in karst regions, which constitute about a
third of Turkey’s territory (Elhatip 1997).
The idea of using tree rings as evidence for past earth-
quakes emerged as early as the mid-nineteenth century.
More recent studies using have developed this idea further
with data from relatively young trees and recent earthquakes
(Sheppard and Jacoby 1989; Jacoby et al. 1997; Bekker 2010;
Stoffel et al. 2010). Yet scholars have found only inconsistent
evidence for the inhibition of tree ring growth a year or two
after an earthquake; some earthquakes did not leave any mark
on tree rings whatsoever (Carrara and O’Neill 2010: 434–435;
Bekker 2010: 394).
Lake-bed sediments might also contain evidence for past
earthquakes, via the study of a series of variables that range
from grain size distributions and geochemistry to diatoms and
magnetic susceptibility (Schwab et al. 2009). Scholars have
proposed additional models to explain changes in pollen con-
centrations in these sediments. In the Dead Sea area, for in-
stance, an earthquake affected local agriculture by destroying
nearby irrigation infrastructure and inhibiting access to fields.
As a result, the pollen signal shows a significant shift in agri-
cultural production for four to five years after the earthquake,
until the irrigation works were repaired and agriculture re-
sumed (Leroy et al. 2010). Using a different approach,
Langgut et al. (2016) resolved the date of a seventh-century
earthquake by analyzing pollens trapped under pottery that
had been produced by kilns destroyed by the seismic event.
The collection of information from all available sources is
necessary for reconstruction of the chronology and effects of a
given historical seismic event. Together with basic characteristics
of the affected communities, such as the local geological com-
positions and cultural factors such as building techniques, such
data could then be instrumentalized by one of the several earth-
quake assessment models that can estimate seismic damages for
the scale of communities (GEM - Global Earthquake Model
2016; Hazus FEMA 2017; USGS PAGER 2016), or individual
structures (OpenHazards Group 2017). Although these assess-
ment models were designed with contemporary earthquakes in
mind, future efforts might attempt to tweak these models to
offer better estimates of the casualties and damage of historical
seismic events.
Methodological Issues with Catalogs
The standard reference works for premodern earthquakes are the
aforementioned historical earthquake catalogs (e.g., Guidoboni
1994; Guidoboni and Comastri 2005; Ambraseys et al. 2005;
Ambraseys 2009). Numerous scholarly works and several digital
databases have mined these catalogs for readily available, pre-
formatted data (e.g. Grünthal and Wahlström 2012; AHEAD
2014). Since catalogs provide voluminous and ostensibly valu-
able information about former seismic events, their dating and
their magnitude, it is tempting to use this concisely formatted
data for statistical purposes. Despite their advantages, however,
catalogs and databases can obfuscate and propagate some of
the errors inherent in our historical sources.
Perhaps the most important issue is that the quantity of
recorded historical seismic events represents only a negligible

percentage of the events which have in fact occurred.
Hundreds of earthquakes are recorded in catalogs, but count-
less others have been forgotten. It is critical to emphasize here
that the data of catalogs, therefore, represents neither a random
nor a complete statistical sample. Because of their centrality
within the ancient and medieval world, Modern Turkey and
Italy are overrepresented compared to other seismically active
areas, including the more peripheral Aegean or the Balkans.
Even within Turkey, the textual evidence for historical earth-
quakes is skewed towards imperial or provincial capitals such
as Constantinople and Antioch, places on which our surviving
historical authors focused their attention. The same authors
that survive as major sources for historical earthquakes in
the Roman-Byzantine Mediterranean only rarely reproduced
the observations or concerns from affected cities in the em-
pire’s more peripheral regions. Accordingly, seismic events
that occurred where no historian wrote or examined, and
where the few written texts were lost to time, remain all but
unknown to us. This bias is reflected in the catalogs:
Constantinople was hit by more than 10% of the known earth-
quakes until 1500 CE even though it was only founded in the
early fourth century CE (see below for details).
Most surviving historical accounts or chronicles preserve at
best minimal or formulaic information pertaining to premod-
ern earthquakes, reporting a seismic event’s Bsnapshot^ in one
city and seriously hindering the calculation or deduction of
epicenters and seismic magnitudes. Historical sources tend
to be economical with details and to focus on the strongest
seismic effects – the destruction of a notable building, for
instance, or the extent of casualties – in addition to the repro-
duction of tropes or clichés concerned with reconstruction
efforts (see below). The design of contemporary catalogs
and databases of historical earthquakes nevertheless often in-
clude modernist criteria such as epicenter and magnitude, as
supplied by, or inferred from, the vague and subjective judgment
of the historical author. The deduction of modernist criteria from
source accounts might be considered an acceptable practice for
catalogs in the rare cases when the author was an eyewitness to
the event. Far more frequently, however, the passages in ques-
tion were transmitted and copied via multiple intermediaries,
with resultant and inadvertent corruption of details.
The problem of corruption and transmission may be most
obvious with regard to the various and parallel dating systems
in use around the Mediterranean and Near East before the
twentieth century (e.g., Meimaris et al. 1992; Bagnall and
Worp 2004), which can make it difficult to establish whether
earthquakes reported in two independent sources are the same
event, a primary earthquake and its aftershocks, or two
entirely separate events. On occasion, ancient and medieval
authors may simply have received inaccurate information.
Some authors also used earthquakes to make unrelated
political and religious claims, or used sources with these
ideologies, which would result in further biases. To address
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these challenges, Zohar et al. (2016) suggested methods to
assess the reliability of earthquake accounts before their inclu-
sion in future catalogs.
Besides compounding problems inherent in the ancient and
medieval primary sources, contemporary catalogs of historical
earthquakes are also susceptible to gaps in their data: relevant
earthquake references are easily missed because some sources
are still unpublished and difficult to access. Further, historical
sources pertaining to the premodern Eastern Mediterranean come
in a dozen languages, while most historians master only two or
three. Even the criteria that qualify the inclusion or exclusion of
certain seismic events from catalogs are often unclear.
The recognition of these inherent shortcomings has resulted
in a trend towards holistic and qualitative, rather than quantita-
tive, analysis of seismic data from catalogs of historical earth-
quakes (Sintubin 2011) (See below for further details that dem-
onstrate the impossibility of utilizing data extracted from these
catalogs for statistical purposes.) As a result of these debates,
the most recent comprehensive such catalog (Ambraseys 2009)
has not included intensity estimates in its analyses, nor even a
concrete estimate for the quantity of earthquakes that occurred
in the period and geographical area it surveys. Such decisions
may make it more difficult to compare or refer to specific seis-
mic events, though they reflect underlying and well-founded
uncertainties in current methodology for historical seismology.
Charting another path forward, Sintubin (2011) has suggested
that the future of archaeoseismology lies instead with the po-
tential for examination of specific historical earthquake scenar-
ios as Bseismoscopes^ for the observation of predicted effects
such as physical or sociological phenomena. We pursue this
path in the remaining sections of this article.
Measuring the Resilience of Complex
Societies to Earthquakes
We follow Ross and Steadman (2017; also Tainter 1988) in
defining complex societies as those which possessed a com-
mon set of institutions beyond kinship bonds that guided po-
litical, social, economic and religious organization. Social
complexity is a continuum and is typically correlated with
increased population, inequality, and heterogeneous occupa-
tional specialization. Complex societies tend to be territorially
organized states that include a professional ruling class and
government, which is a specialized and (to varying degrees)
centralized decision-making organization that can mandate
societal obligations in the form of taxes and legislation,
backed by the threat of force.
As discussed in the previous paper in this issue (Mordechai
2018), a complex society can mitigate the damage of a SCE by
weakening any part or link in the proposed schematic model
which we have repeated above. For instance, societies could
mitigate future seismic damage by developing more
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earthquake-resistant structures; high levels of local solidarity
could help reduce casualties by coordinated rescue operations
and reconstruction activities; or a society might construct pub-
lic granaries to counter future food shortages. Unfortunately,
these methods are almost invisible in our brief historical
sources, which tend towards discussions of destruction and
casualties as opposed to reconstruction or mitigation efforts.
Indeed, the mitigation of future earthquake effects appears to
have become a concern only in the modern era; premodern
states focused on the remediation of seismic damage in the
short rather than long term.
We selected post-disaster reconstruction efforts which ap-
pear in historical and archaeological or scientific sources as
the closest proxy for societal resilience to earthquakes. We sur-
mised that resilient societies would rebuild more quickly,
bouncing back to their pre-event state with regards to popula-
tion levels, societal complexity, and settlement patterns. More
vulnerable societies would take longer to rebuild, and might see
changes in their social system, especially when encountering
strong seismic events. They might, for example, change their
settlement patterns, moving from stratified city networks to
smaller, less complex, villages. The burden of periodic rebuild-
ing could also depopulate earthquake prone regions under such
vulnerable societal systems as individuals migrate elsewhere.
Earthquake Reconstruction, Regeneration,
and Resilience
The complex trajectory of SCE effects described above for
earthquakes, and in the preceding article from this volume
(Mordechai above), presumably incentivized central and local
governments to stop negative effects from spiraling out of
control (Garnsey 1988: 26–28). Even if seismic events did
not threaten central or local governments directly, their effects
could potentially destabilize administrative structures through
social unrest, decreased economic productivity accompanied
by declining tax revenues, as well as heightened perceptions
of illegitimacy and incompetence. The size of all three regional
empires in the Eastern Mediterranean over the past two
millennia (Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman), together with long
communication times and difficult transportation, required local
governors to demonstrate their resourcefulness and independent
problem-solving skills without the guarantee of assistance from
the imperial center.
Social Responses to Premodern Earthquakes
Due to slow communication and transportation times, imme-
diate relief after an earthquake depended on local-level ad hoc
arrangements. Even in modern times, 90% of trapped victims
brought out alive from beneath the rubble are rescued in the
first 24 h after the event (Smith 2013). Although premodern
logistics prevented regional and imperial networks from
responding quickly enough to rescue survivors from the rub-
ble, they could help with the longer rehabilitation period by
supplying necessary manpower and additional food supplies.
Contemporaries were aware that overcoming earthquake dam-
age using only local resources was difficult. In the late fourth
century, Symmachus pointed out that the people of Benevento
tried to restore their city using their own resources after an
earthquake, acknowledging the task’s difficulty because of
the extensive destruction (Guidoboni 1994: #159). On other
occasions, such as in late thirteenth-century Potenza, many of
the inhabitants were unable to rebuild even their own homes
(Guidoboni and Comastri 2005: #127).
Rulers, who embodied the state, received much of the cred-
it for post-earthquake reconstruction since they often also
commissioned the surviving historical works and inscriptions.
A vague group of cases includes locals who financed recon-
struction. Some of these were representatives of the state such
as local officials or regional governors, but most of them are
otherwise unattested and were probably local elites who pro-
vided relief as unofficial patrons in local power structures.
Finally, there are few cases in antiquity in which foreign po-
tentates donated funds or sent support to other polities to bol-
ster their own domestic image or to gain international recog-
nition for themselves.
The Central government’s Role in Earthquake
Response
The central government’s set of responses to provincial crises
was limited, especially in times of slow communications, and
tended to be reactive. The easiest and most common solution
was tax remission for a certain period of time, often two to five
years (Guidoboni 1994: #80, #90, #117; #183). For instance,
after the 528 CE earthquake in Laodicea in Asia Minor, the
Byzantine emperor Justinian exempted the city from taxes for
three years (Malalas 1986: 442–444). Tax remissions could
ease an afflicted community’s burden and encourage locals to
remain in place and newcomers to migrate to it in pursuit of
development opportunities. The central government could al-
so fund some relief efforts, although this type of response
appears less often in our sources, which move their attention
elsewhere after reporting on the original disaster. On certain
occasions, the central government commissioned administra-
tors and engineers to rebuild local infrastructure. The emperor
John Tsimiskes (969–976 CE), for instance, sent an official
with twelve thousand workers to rebuild reconquered
Antioch, after the city had been damaged by earthquakes
(Guidoboni 1994: #294). Favorite buildings for government-
sponsored reconstruction were ideological (central churches)
and infrastructural (city walls, waterworks). Such buildings

symbolized the community and the ruler’s support of it, while
the improved infrastructure would further facilitate locally or-
ganized reconstruction of privately owned domestic, commer-
cial, and industrial structures.
The funds sent for post-earthquake relief and reconstruc-
tion were limited in comparison with costs for new construc-
tion projects during the same period. Imperial Roman and
Byzantine historiography tends to describe post-earthquake
urban reconstruction in a symbolic manner with a generic
picture of whole cities ‘rebuilt’, ‘reconstructed’ or ‘restored’
thanks to state-directed support in coin or labor (Thomas and
Witschel 1992; but also Fagan 1996). However, these rhetor-
ical images, wherein cities were returned to their pristine pre-
disaster state, rarely correspond to archaeological evidence,
especially at the level of individual buildings or neighbor-
hoods. Instead, the archaeological and literary evidence taken
together suggests that state-provided funds for post-
earthquake recovery were often limited. Moreover, recon-
struction efforts were rarely if ever ‘restorations’ in the mod-
ern sense of the word, but instead adaptations that re-designed
urban landscapes to correspond with recent societal changes
in politics, economy and religion (see below sec. 10).
Among the primary sources describing the state-directed
monetary relief of Antioch following the sixth-century earth-
quakes, Malalas (1986: 419–422) and Pseudo-Dionysius of
Tel-Mahre (1966: 52) indicate that five kentenaria were sent
to Antioch for reconstruction after the 526 CE earthquake and
just two kentenaria were sent to Laodicea after an earthquake
in 528 CE (Malalas 1986: 443). (One kentenaria is one hun-
dred pounds of gold, or 7200 solidus-denomination gold
coins: see Hendy 1985: 166–178 and 217–221). By way of
comparison, we should note that such sums could sometimes
be gathered from a city’s own resources or even through the
munificence of a single individual (Procopius 1914b: 2.8,
Agnellus 2004: 59, Procopius 1914c: 27.21). This is the context
in which we should understand the extraordinary efforts of the
comes orientis and bishop of Amida after the earthquake at
Antioch in 526 CE. The two officials managed to secure a grant
from the emperor for thirty kentenaria to be directed towards
the immediate relief of Antioch and another ten kentenaria for
its churches (Malalas 1986: 424).
Altogether, these numbers suggest that state-provided sub-
sidies for earthquake reconstruction during Late Antiquity
were, for the most part, relatively limited in magnitude, even
when given to a major city like Antioch. On the other hand,
the top-down organization of regional support such as provi-
sion of construction materials or skilled labor (including engi-
neers and soldiers) are occasionally noted in the sources, but
they are less easily quantifiable, though they may have been as
important as cash for rebuilding efforts (Theophanes
1997: AM 6019; Malalas 1986: 422).
The Byzantine and Ottoman capital, Constantinople, enjoyed
special imperial attention. Although emperors and sultans did not
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govern the city directly, they tended to be more involved and
invested in any reconstruction efforts in it, backing them with
their substantial resources. Building had been a favorite activity
of rulers since antiquity, and as detailed below, SCE-induced
destruction could clear central areas for new construction projects
through which rulers could advertise themselves. The massive
Hagia Sophia church in the capital, for instance, was built after a
previous smaller church in the same area was destroyed by fire
(Procopius 1914a: 1.1.20ff). Such crises also allowed rulers to
show their magnanimity through liberal expenditure upon reli-
gious institutions (cf. Ambraseys 2009: 259), and social institu-
tions such as sick-houses and orphanages or public waterworks
such as aqueducts and cisterns (cf. Skylitzes 2010: 389; perhaps
Ambraseys 2009: 116–117). Rulers could display solidarity and
humility in other ways. After the 557 CE earthquake in
Constantinople, for instance, the emperor appeared in public
without his crown for about a month (Ambraseys 2009: 208–
211); another emperor walked barefoot Bfor many days^ and
prayed with the population outside the city on two occasions
(Ambraseys 2009: 163–167).
The Role of Governors and Local Elites
in Earthquake Response
Local government representatives were responsible for the
organization and coordination of a province’s or city’s post-
SCE response: such local representatives appear more fre-
quently in sources during the first few centuries CE. The level
of their independence and the resources they controlled varied
considerably, and they are often commemorated in local in-
scriptions rather than historical texts. Some were more dynam-
ic than others. The emperor Marcus Aurelius praised a certain
Euxenianus Publius for Balleviating the suffering that befell
the people of Smyrna as a result of the earthquake there^,
probably in 160 CE (Thonemann 2012: 265–267; also
Guidoboni 1994: #116). In an apocryphal story, an official
sent by the emperor Nerva at the end of the first century used
his funds to rebuild the city of Anazarbus in Asia Minor,
leading the citizens to name the city after him (Guidoboni
1994: #103; for the city Gough 1952).
The sources preserve hints of attempts to institutionalize
local solidarity. The mid-second century BCE president of
the confederation of Lycian cities, for instance, funded large-
scale restoration in the region (Ambraseys 2009: 128–131). A
mid-third-century CE letter by emperor Gordian III refers to a
local organization that tried to require local cities in Asia
Minor to come to the aid of earthquake victims in neighboring
cities. The emperor pointed out that this aid was voluntary
(Ambraseys 2009: 137; Guidoboni 1994: #124). Such agree-
ments were beneficial from a regional perspective since they
split relief costs among a larger group of settlements and elites
in the province, providing a sort of insurance.
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A group close to the provincial officials were local elites,
who also feature mostly in inscriptions commemorating local
rebuilding efforts and their associated costs. Differentiating
between these local elites and official representatives of the
centralized imperial administration is often difficult. After the
earthquake of 363 CE, for instance, an inscription recorded an
anonymous person (the name is missing) who reinforced
some of the public buildings in Nauplia Bout of goodwill
and generosity^ (Guidoboni 1994: #150). Other elites funded
specific projects. Inscriptions from Lydia refer to local elite
women who restored buildings and a statue that their parents
had erected (Ambraseys 2009: 106–108).
Both governors and local elites often had interests of their
own to maintain the status quo ante: since their authority
depended on continuity of settlement, such elites probably
considered emigration from their area and chaotic civic unrest
as potential negative outcomes of SCEs. By supporting their
less-well-to-do neighbors, such individuals could gain or
maintain significant social capital and prestige in the region.
Piety was also a factor in local elite munificence: for instance,
one member of this group, Antonios Sarantari, restored a mon-
astery after an earthquake in early fifteenth-century Byzantine
Greece (Guidoboni and Comastri 2005: #277).
Of course, local elites did not always contribute automati-
cally to these causes. Governors would sometimes ask local
elites for help in rebuilding. In a sense, this was a form of
pooling resources together, as these elites had the necessary
cash while the governors had control over state resources,
which could include coordination of labor and materials need-
ed for reconstruction. For instance, a mid-fourth century in-
scription from Isernia refers to an elite family who funded
reconstruction efforts but received the materials to do so from
the local authorities (Guidoboni 1994: #144).
More humble locals could also petition elites for support.
The sixth-century historian Agathias preserves a story (1975:
2.17) about a peasant who traveled from Tralles to the emperor
Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE) and received imperial funding for
the city, which commemorated the peasant with a statue.
Whether this particular story is true or not, it suggests that
such petitions existed, and therefore we can assume local
elites also received such requests on a smaller scale.
Archaeological Evidence for Earthquake
Response and Reconstruction
Despite the loss of life which disproportionately affects low-
income individuals in squatter or substandard dwellings
(Green 2008), modern scholarship dealing with SCEs also
emphasizes the potential generative space in cities and insti-
tutions created by the sudden mass destruction of public build-
ings, private dwellings, and infrastructure (Cuny 1983: 101–6;
Özerdem and Jacoby 2006: 94). Just so, Walmsley has argued
that building activities in Late Roman cities in Syria and
Palestine were not arbitrary but instead were Baccommodated
carefully and sympathetically within the urban plan^ in a way
that adapted to the evolution of society (2007: 39). Comparing
the archaeological evidence for post-SCE reconstruction epi-
sodes at Syrian Antioch, West Anatolian Ephesos, West
Anatolian Hierapolis, and the cities of the Levant helps to
make these analogous points (see Fig. 1 for these and other
cities). Post-SCE reconstruction episodes rarely ‘rebuilt’ cities
in a literal sense – as often vaguely communicated by surviv-
ing textual sources – but rather SCEs such as earthquakes
created spaces of institutional and architectural potentiality
for adaptive modifications and reorganization of the existing
urban fabric.
At Antioch, for example, we might witness several centu-
ries of adaptive changes to urban fabrics that followed seismic
events. During the Roman imperial period, the historian
Malalas reports on the construction of Antioch’s first bath
and an aqueduct after the 37 CE earthquake (1986: 243.10–
21), and a second aqueduct and bath that were added after the
115 CE earthquake (1986: 275.3). These were important in-
frastructural additions to the urban fabric at Antioch that did
not merely Breconstruct^ the city as it had existed previously.
Rather, they took advantage of the destruction of seismic
events to literally clear the ground for new, sizable projects
that changed Antioch’s urban aspect.
A similar trend prevails at Antioch over the sixth century,
albeit with perhaps sharper differentiation between the pre-
and post-earthquake urban environments, against a backdrop
of repeated disasters that affected Antioch, including earth-
quakes, fire, plague and invasion (Izdebski et al., this volume).
The archaeological signatures of these catastrophes remain
difficult to distinguish due to challenges with the dating of
the excavation results (Eger 2013: 105–127). Nevertheless,
the archaeological reports reveal that the mid- and later
sixth-century responses to these events did not literally rebuild
the city, but instead adaptively re-structured it so as to better
correspond to the needs of an evolving society (Buildings
2.10.1–25 and cf. Pickett 2017: 110–112). Churches at
Antioch suffered from varying degrees of damage, but it is
clear that their reconstruction was a priority for local popula-
tions and an ideological imperative for elites (Mayer and
Allen 2012: 74–6, 109, and 98–9). Antioch’s streets, fortifica-
tions, and waterworks were maintained and rebuilt during the
sixth century, albeit on smaller scales and with adaptive mod-
ifications (Döring 2012 and Pickett 2017), while its public
facilities such as baths, theaters, and hippodromes were aban-
doned or repurposed for industry, agriculture, and burial (Eger
2013 and Pamir 2014: 112 and 120).
Such changes were endemic across the Eastern
Mediterranean during Late Antiquity, symptoms of deep
structural changes in Roman society (Saradi 2006; Haldon
1997; Haldon 2016). The role of earthquakes in urban change

Fig. 1 Mediterranean cities that experienced premodern earthquakes (partial)
during this period should be understood as but one pendulous
contributing factor, whose magnitude could punctuate or ac-
celerate longer-cycle evolutions and thereby push urban sys-
tems, like Antioch, to a transformed physical state. Seismic
events thus precluded facile reconstructions but instead pro-
voked, enabled, and formalized longer-term evolutions within
cities, instead. As such, earthquakes were arguably not drivers
or prime-movers for urban change, but rather their punctua-
tion marks, before new beginnings.
This point is reinforced by evidence for post-earthquake
reorganization from Ephesus, where excavations directed by
the ÖAI since 1895 have revealed that earthquakes in the later
third and fourth centuries CE set the stage for large-scale in-
terventions in the city’s urban fabric after the early fifth cen-
tury. These interventions Bredefined the character of the late
antique urban landscape^ and reflected the political, commer-
cial and religious changes of the fourth century (Ladstätter and
Pülz 2007: 397–406). While the skeleton of Roman infrastruc-
ture for the streets and water supply at Ephesus was not only
maintained but even expanded, the appearance and function-
ality of the city changed markedly. Notably, the early fifth
century marks the introduction of church architecture in the
earthquake-damaged shells of massive pagan temple com-
plexes at Ephesus, the Serapeion and the Temple of Hadrian
(Pickett 2016, 306–308). Another ruined temple was convert-
ed into a fortified administrative structure. Several of the city’s
larger bath complexes were abandoned or repurposed.
Industrial watermills also began to appear in public spaces
throughout the city during this period, marking a substantial
alteration of the city’s appearance (Pickett 2016: 299–302).
Hum Ecol
Such changes, wrought in the wake of SCEs at Ephesus,
strongly distinguished the Early Byzantine city from its
Roman predecessor and were maintained until the mid- or
late- seventh and eighth centuries, when the subsequent com-
bination of additional earthquakes, Arab invasions, and long-
term political and economic changes prompted the abatement
and fragmentation of settlement into smaller centers at
Ephesus, Ayasoluk, and on the coast at ancient Anaia (modern
Kuşadaşı: Ladstätter and Pülz 2007).
A yet stronger pattern of seismically-driven urban adap-
tation prevails at Phrygian Hierapolis, which sits directly
on the Pamukkale fault (Hierapolis VII, 207–231). Here,
earthquakes in the later fourth century CE similarly gave
way to Binterventions of restructuring and reconstruction
which … changed the aspect of the city^ – in this case by
Christianizing the town and repurposing older public
buildings for new functions (Hierapolis VII, 48–54 and
Arthur 2012, 277–9). While the city’s system of streets,
aqueducts, baths and latrines was repaired during the late
fourth or early fifth centuries, there were major changes of
function and aspect for the city’s surviving buildings.
These included the construction of a circuit wall with
reused materials, which contracted the city around a small-
er core (comparable with Laodicea and Aphrodisias); the
dismantling and obliteration of pagan monuments; the con-
version of the city’s theater into housing, a public building,
and a chapel; and the new construction of a small bath and
three large churches inserted into a repaired bath building
that had been previously damaged by an earthquake
(Arthur 2012).
Hum Ecol
Despite this image of Hierapolis’ basic infrastructural resil-
ience during the fourth and fifth centuries, accompanied by
substantial alterations in the city’s fabric that reflected societal
evolutions in the preceding decades, a cluster of devastating
earthquakes in the mid-seventh century pushed the system
into a different state entirely. This transformation – which
the excavators strongly associated with a seismic event c.
670 – included the total abandonment of the city’s public
architecture, water supply systems and rectilinear streets
(Hierapolis VII, 54–7; Ambraseys 2009: 223). Low-density
residences and industrial installations moved into the shells of
collapsed buildings in the area around the city’s walls, which
were not repaired, while the St. Philip complex outside the
walls was repaired and continued to function as a necropolis
and a focus of regional and supra-regional pilgrimage, long
after the city’s other churches had collapsed (Hierapolis VII,
136–7). These SCE-triggered changes constituted a radical,
low-cost form of reorganization of settlement patterns and
re-focus within the remains of the ruined antique city, which
survived in this form until the thirteenth-century arrival of the
Seljuks in the Lycos valley around Hierapolis.
By comparison, the Roman-to-Byzantine cities of the
Levant survived the sixth-seventh century SCEs mostly intact
despite almost two decades of Persian occupation in the early
seventh century and the Umayyad conquests of the 630 s. But
many Levantine cities lost their Roman-Byzantine monumen-
tality and became lower-density settlements only during the
eighth century: special importance is ascribed to the seismic
events that affected the region ca. 746–757 CE (Ambraseys
2009: 230–8), after which Roman infrastructure and buildings
were almost universally no longer rebuilt (Avni 2014).
Scythopolis (modern Beth Shean) stands as a case in point. A
destructive earthquake in 659–60 CE accelerated urban re-
organization by the ruling Umayyad authorities, who adapted
the older Roman-Byzantine city to meet contemporary needs.
A damaged Byzantine public basilica in the lower town’s center
was demolished and replaced with a monumental suq, or row of
shops, completed in 737/8 CE (Khamis 2001). The earthquake of
659–60 CE was probably also responsible for damaging the East
Baths, which became the site of flour mills, and for destroying
the large central-plan church atop the summit of the tell of
Scythopolis, which was in turn replaced by an Umayyad qasr,
a thick-walled governmental complex (Walmsley 2007: 88). A
subsequent round of earthquakes ca. 746–757 CE left the city
depopulated and despoiled of its Roman architectural aspect.
Similar fates – recurring phases of repair and adaptation
following SCEs in the sixth and seventh centuries – befell
the nearby cities of Caesarea Maritima (Dey et al. 2014),
Gadara (Weber 2002), Pella (McNicoll et al. 1982: 123),
Hippos-Susita (Segal and Eisenberg 2007), Abila (Wineland
2001), and Gerasa (Avni 2014). The exact trajectory of each
city and its relative importance varied, and some clearly fared
better than others over time. Urban retrenchment and the
ultimate withdrawal of investment from the cities occurred
only after the earthquakes of ca. 746–757, an abrupt shift from
the gradual urban change that followed earthquakes in earlier
centuries. This process coincided with the marginalization of
the Levantine cities after the Abbasids moved the Islamic
caliphate’s capital and their funds to Baghdad (750 CE).
Premodern Earthquake Mitigation
Although episodes of construction and restoration or recon-
struction in Roman and Byzantine cities demonstrably cluster
around seismic events (e.g. Thomas et al. 2007 and Stiros
et al. 2006), it remains unclear whether the techniques of
Roman and Byzantine construction progressively adapted to
become more seismically resistant over time to mitigate the
effects of future events. Moropoulou et al. (2000, 2002) have
suggested that Late Roman and Byzantine building materials
and techniques (including banded courses of stone and brick
laid in deep-set mortar with high aggregate:binder ratios,
recessed brick, and varieties of masonry arch/vault construc-
tion) created dampening effects or supported greater continu-
ous stresses and strains, and thereby enabled earthquake
responsivity. However, their findings have been little tested
against buildings outside Constantinople or Kiev, nor have
they been set in long-term historical contexts that would con-
textualize the progressive responsiveness of Roman-
Byzantine architectural practice to seismic events over time.
Mark and Çakmak (1992) have argued that the Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople was intentionally constructed with
earthquake-resistant techniques and materials. The former
note that the Hagia Sophia was constructed with heavy lime-
stone piers dampened by construction that extended down to
the bedrock; iron ring- or tie-beams were also inserted around
its interior arcades and into dome’s fabric. Moropoulou et al.
(2000) further surmised that the particular character of masonry
and mortars used in the monument’s construction may also
have contributed to its survival in a seismically active area
for fifteen centuries.
On the other hand, Ortega et al. (2017) have emphasized
the global, trans-historical development of a range of seismi-
cally resistant architectural practices and building modifica-
tions which can promote seismic resistance, and which are
found – at different times and places – throughout the premod-
ern Eastern Mediterranean. These include the primary em-
ployment of timber reinforcements laid within walls or as
bracing for roofs, the use of masonry at the corners, gapped
lintels or arches above doorways and windows, the secondary
addition of masonry buttresses and reinforcement arches to
existing buildings, as well as the primary or secondary em-
ployment of ring- and tie-beams in timber, masonry, or iron.
Rather more evidence for the progressive adaptation of archi-
tecture to earthquakes exists in later Crusader constructions

scattered throughout the Levant and Cyprus, for which a
Gothic architectural idiom that developed in France was trans-
ferred – and then adapted – to the highly seismic conditions of
the Eastern Mediterranean (Raphael 2013: 147–160).
Discussion – Societal Resilience
to Earthquakes
Even a superficial survey of past earthquakes shows that,
by and large, complex societies in the premodern Eastern
Mediterranean were both highly fragile and susceptible
to repeated earthquake damages at the scale of individual
buildings, but demonstrated resilience to earthquakes at
the city and state scales. Although the seismic activity in
the region might have caused periodic and significant
destruction at a local and even regional level, earth-
quakes never threatened centralized governments or other
key state and social institutions, such as the religious
hierarchy or the army. Communities at the local and re-
gional level also exhibited surprising resilience: in only a
few cases do earthquakes appear to have been a major
factor that caused changes in settlement patterns or soci-
etal disruption. Such cases are isolated archaeologically
and textually amidst important and larger cultural trans-
formations throughout the Levant and Anatolia during
the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries CE. Although
the impact of earthquakes is impossible to quantify be-
cause of the inherent methodological issues discussed
above and below, it is clear that any significant long-
term societal disruption was the exception rather than
the norm: earthquakes were, at worst, stress-tests that
could trigger cascading effects that compounded pre-
existing societal vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
While premodern society did not change as a result of
earthquakes – at least insofar as it is visible through
textual, archaeological, or scientific sources – the lack
of evidence in this direction should not be equated to a
lack of change whatsoever. Comparison of responses
from contemporary Japanese or Turkish societies after
earthquakes during the 1990s is salutary: while Japan
promoted earthquake responsivity and resilience after
the 1995 Kobe earthquake via an array of standardized
architectural improvements that would presumably be
visible in the future archaeologically, Turkish society’s
improvements in the organization of civil society groups
for aid and rescue after the 1999 Marmara earthquake
would remain largely invisible by the same measure
(Özerdem and Jacoby 2006). Although the exact nature
or organization of premodern earthquake rescue is virtu-
ally unknown, the progressive nature of historical earth-
quake mitigation via architecture is a developing topic
without firm conclusions to date. Scattered evidence
Hum Ecol
suggests the studied and self-conscious, if also highly
inconsistent adaptation of building practices and tech-
niques for high-status structures like churches, fortifica-
tions, and baths, if not also vernacular and domestic
structures (Ortega et al. 2017).
The lack of sources and clear data means that, ultimate-
ly, little is known about the social mechanisms that con-
tributed to the resilience of these local and regional com-
munities. Beyond the few extant case studies, any wider
conclusion about how they persisted must be both conjec-
tural and generalized over a long period or over a large
area. Nonetheless, some of the core features of premodern
societies – such as slow communication of information,
the near-absence of construction regulations, or the mini-
mum of social services provided by the state – would
place those societies at a severe disadvantage compared
to communities in the modern world. The historical
sources are clear that earthquakes could indeed cause
massive destruction and numerous casualties, but the
treatment of seismic events in historical sources comes
only briefly and in passing. Narrated events are treated
at varying levels of detail, but there are only a few occa-
sions in which authors refer to earlier earthquakes in the
context of a current event in their narrative. There are
almost no discussions of the long-term consequences of
seismic events. The archaeological and natural proxy
sources tend to corroborate the written evidence
concerning the frequency and magnitude of premodern
Eastern Mediterranean seismicity, providing evidence that
some of these were truly destructive events rather than
literary flourishes. Furthermore, modern parallels provide
clear evidence for the destructive potential of past earth-
quakes in the region. All this further highlights the resil-
ience of past societies to such occurrences.
Seismic activity in the Eastern Mediterranean meant that
locals had to cope with periodic bouts of destruction.
Although our evidence is slim, there are clear signs that con-
temporaries arranged coordinated relief efforts at different
levels of society. Central governments do not appear to have
considered committing to large-scale changes – in building
forms, legislation, settlement patterns or responses. Rather, em-
perors and elites were ready to invest substantial resources in
rebuilding ad hoc whenever necessary. The outcome – a system
mediated culturally through local power relations and personal
connections rather than through legislation – provided a resil-
ient outcome at several levels of Roman and Byzantine society.
Cases like that of the sixth century, when contemporaries faced
the Sisyphean task of continuous rebuilding after repeated di-
sasters, prove the tenacity by which elites, in both the provinces
and central bureaucracy, clung to their local interests. More
research on SCEs and the interaction between central and local
responses to them could uncover more of the mechanisms driv-
ing these cultural expectations and behaviors.
Hum Ecol
Conclusion
We have argued that earthquakes are the quintessential
type of short-term cataclysmic events. They are brief yet
can have a substantial effect upon complex human soci-
eties over the short and long term. Unlike most other
SCE types, they have a signature in all three main
groups of sources used to learn about the past environ-
ment. The shortcomings of each of these groups of
sources can be ameliorated to an extent by using the
other two.
We have demonstrated the methodological flaws inherent
to earthquake catalogs. These flaws, which are only partially
acknowledged in the scholarly literature, prevent performing
meaningful statistical analysis on the contents of these cata-
logs because of the small sample size and multiple biases of
both the sources and modern research.
The second half of the article focused on the resilience of
past societies to seismic events. Examining the bulk of evi-
dence through historical and archaeological sources, we ar-
gued that despite the few and ambiguous details, the best
proxies for societal resilience are therefore written references
and archaeological evidence that attest to reconstruction ef-
forts. Together, they reveal that reconstruction was a complex
and adaptive process in which cities used the destruction to
reshape themselves according to their contemporary needs.
We did not find evidence for widespread adaptation in
preparation for future seismic events. By and large, premodern
societies responded to earthquakes in an ad hoc manner after
the event. Different groups in society led the reconstruction
efforts. Although the central government took the most credit
for rebuilding society, its responses to earthquakes in its prov-
inces were limited in extent. Most of the burden fell on a
combination of provincial governors and local elites, who
often pooled their material resources and labor together to
perform the reconstruction over years.
Although the statistical analysis we attempted to per-
form (see below) to assess differential societal resilience
proved inconclusive because of the limited non-
representative sample size and multiple biases involved, it
is clear that complex societies in the Eastern Mediterranean
were resilient to earthquakes. Despite the periodic destruc-
tion wrought by seismic events in the region, they did not
threaten central governments or other important social in-
stitutions in local societies. Considering the quantity of
destructive earthquakes in the region in modern times,
long-term local societal disruption or changes in settlement
patterns are much more rare than one might expect. This
conclusion appears to point to the organization of provin-
cial societies under local elites as a key resilient social
structure. More research into case studies might reveal ad-
ditional insights about the practicalities of this societal
configuration.
Addendum: Assessing a Statistical Approach
to Societal Resilience to Premodern
Mediterranean Earthquakes
To assess the viability of statistical analysis to illuminate so-
cietal resilience to seismic events, we chose to use the recent
and relatively comprehensive catalogs of Guidoboni (1994)
and Guidoboni and Comastri (2005), which together cover
the period up to 1500 around the Mediterranean. Since the
methods in both volumes are not identical, we kept the divi-
sion between them visible in the following analysis. The cat-
alogs contain data about 684 earthquakes: 300 for the period
from the eighth century BCE to 1000 CE and another 384 for
the period 1000–1500 CE. In addition to references to recon-
struction efforts in the historical sources, we extracted from
the catalog entries data that included the earthquake’s
date, its suggested epicenter, whether it hit the capital
Constantinople, and its intensity, defining a strong earth-
quake as EMS > 7 in the first volume and Imax >6.5 in the
second (both volumes use different intensity measures).
Reconstruction efforts are mentioned in 72 of the 300
events in the first volume (24%) and 54 of the 384 events in
the second volume (14%). Both spatial and chronological fac-
tors influence these numbers. About a third of the earthquakes
attested before 1000 CE occurred in Turkey, and we hear
about reconstruction efforts in 33% of these (35 of 107), as
opposed to only 19% (37 of 193) of the earthquakes outside
Turkey. For the 1000–1500 CE period we hear about recon-
struction efforts in only 9% of the earthquakes in Turkey (9 of
103), as opposed to 16% of the earthquakes outside Turkey
(45 of 281). The sources report reconstruction more common-
ly for specific periods. For instance, we hear of 22 cases of
reconstruction efforts among the 34 earthquakes in Turkey
before 300 CE (65% compared to 18%, or 13 of 73, for the
300–1000 CE interval). Reconstruction seems to be reported
more frequently after stronger earthquakes, but this effect does
not appear in all cases. There are fewer reports on average
about reconstruction in Constantinople, capital of the
Byzantine Empire since the fourth century CE and later of
the Ottoman Empire and the largest city of Christendom for
most of this period (9% and 17% for both periods, respectively
3 of 35 and 6 of 36). For more powerful earthquakes in
Constantinople, however, this ratio rises considerably to
25% and 38% (3 of 12 and 5 of 13), respectively.
Additional factors influence these numbers. Some recon-
struction efforts are known through inscriptions, which are
more common in certain times and places, for instance during
Greco-Roman antiquity (Guidoboni and Ebel 2009: 58–73).
Sites from this period are also over-represented in excavations
in the region, resulting in more inscriptions. The literary tra-
dition and genre from which we know about the earthquakes
also matters – we know of more relief efforts recorded in
Greek and Latin than in Arabic or Hebrew, for instance.

Armenian historians use earthquakes in their narratives as a
powerful signal of divine wrath, and they were therefore
uninterested in subsequent reconstruction or relief. On the
other hand, some Byzantine or Italian inscriptions were made
for the sole reason of exulting the person who funded or man-
aged some of the reconstruction efforts.
All this demonstrates that reconstruction efforts are men-
tioned infrequently in our sources. Their appearance depends
on multiple and largely independent factors, which reflect the
complex interactions between the past seismic event, the man-
ner in which the event was recorded (if at all), past cultural
practices which have nothing to do with the event, and con-
temporary biases in scholarship. Since the surviving sample
size is too small to reach any significant conclusion based on
statistical analysis, we did not pursue this approach any
further.
Acknowledgements This paper results from presentations and discus-
sions that took place at workshops organized by the Climate Change
and History Research Initiative at Princeton in 2015 and 2016.
Funding This study received no dedicated funding support.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of
interest.
Informed Consent The research for and preparation of this article in-
volved no human subjects.
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