River Terraces of the Nahr el Kebir, NW Syria, and their Palaeolithic Record

Quaternary Science Reviews

Demi̇r

Seyrek

et al. 2017

Self Cite

(2017) 'River terrace development in the NE Mediterranean region (Syria and Turkey) : patterns in relation to crustal type.', Quaternary science reviews., 166 . pp. 307-323. Further information on publisher's website: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. JQSR-D-16-00142I am resubmitting our paper for the FLAG special issue od QSR: River terrace development in the NE Mediterranean region (Syria and Turkey): patterns in relation to crustal typePlease note tat the title has been changed to reflect the main thrust of the revision, which, based on advice from the reviewers and from the Guest Editor, gives emphasis to the patterns of archive preservation in relation to crustal type.The resubmission includes a 'response to reviews' document and a colour$coded annotated version of te new text, as well as a clean copy.I hope that this will prove acceptable. Many thanks Yours faithfullyDavid Bridgland It is widely recognized that the optimal development of river terraces globally has been in the temperate latitudes, with NW and Central Europe being areas of particular importance for the preservation of such archives of Quaternary environmental change. There is also a growing consensus that the principal drivers of terrace formation have been climatic fluctuation against a background of progressive (but variable) uplift. Nonetheless river terraces are widely preserved in the Mediterranean region, where they have often been attributed to the effects of neotectonic activity, with a continuing debate about the relative significance of fluctuating temperature (glacials-interglacials) and precipitation (pluvialsinterpluvials). Research in Syria and southern-central Turkey (specifically in the valleys of the Tigris and Ceyhan in Turkey, the Kebir in Syria and the trans-border rivers Orontes and Euphrates) has underlined the importance of uplift rates in dictating the preservation pattern of fluvial archives and has revealed different patterns that can be related to crustal type. The NE Mediterranean coastal region has experienced unusually rapid uplift in the Late Quaternary. The relation between the Kebir terraces and the staircase of interglacial raised beaches preserved along the Mediterranean coastline of NW Syria reinforces previous conclusions that the emplacement of the fluvial terrace deposits in the Mediterranean has occurred during colder climatic episodes. Department of Geography

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Nahr El Kebir Nw Syriamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Nahr El Kebir Nw Syriamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

River terrace development in the NE Mediterranean region (Syria and Turkey): Patterns in relation to crustal type

Quaternary Science Reviews

Demi̇r

Seyrek

et al. 2017

Self Cite

“…A direct correlation between fluvial and marine terraces, and Erol's (1963) resulting age assignment of this fluvial terrace to the 'Riss-Würm Interglacial', is unlikely to be tenable, given that current wisdom generally attributes river terrace gravels to cold-climate episodes (e.g. Bridgland, 2000;Bridgland and Westaway, 2008b;Bridgland et al, 2008). The reported heights of Erol's (1963) five Orontes terraces in the reach between Bostancık Köyü and the upstream end of the Samandağ Tepe gorge, 5-7, 15-25, 40-50, 70-80, and 90-100 m above the modern river, are indicative of a regular pattern, suggesting terrace formation in response to 100 ka climatic cycles, as in other parts of the world (cf.…”

Section: The Lower Orontes Downstream Of Antakyamentioning

confidence: 97%

The River Orontes in Syria and Turkey: Downstream variation of fluvial archives in different crustal blocks

Westaway

Romieh³

et al. 2012

Geomorphology

Self Cite

The geomorphology and Quaternary history of the River Orontes in western Syria and south-central Turkey have been studied using a combination of methods: field survey, differential GPS, satellite imagery, analysis of sediments to determine provenance, flow direction and fluvial environment, incorporation of evidence from fossils for both palaeoenvironments and biostratigraphy, uranium-series dating of calcrete cement, reconciliation of Palaeolithic archaeological contents, and uplift modelling based on terrace height distribution. The results underline the contrasting nature of different reaches of the Orontes, in part reflecting different crustal blocks, with different histories of landscape evolution. Upstream from Homs the Orontes has a system of calcreted terraces that form a staircase extending to~200 m above the river. New U-series dating provides an age constraint within the lower part of the sequence that suggests underestimation of terrace ages in previous reviews. This upper valley is separated from another terraced reach, in the Middle Orontes, by a gorge cut through the Late Miocene-Early Pliocene Homs Basalt. The Middle Orontes terraces have long been recognized as a source of mammalian fossils and Palaeolithic artefacts, particularly from Latamneh, near the downstream end of the reach. This terraced section of the valley ends at a fault scarp, marking the edge of the subsiding Ghab Basin (a segment of the Dead Sea Fault Zone), which has been filled to a depth of 1 km by dominantly lacustrine sediments of Pliocene-Quaternary age. Review of the fauna from Latamneh suggests that its age is 1.2-0.9 Ma, significantly older than previously supposed, and commensurate with less uplift in this reach than both the Upper and Lower Orontes. Two localities near the downstream end of the Ghab have provided molluscan and ostracod assemblages that record somewhat saline environments, perhaps caused by desiccation within the former lacustrine basin, although they include fluvial elements. The Ghab is separated from another subsiding and formerly lacustrine depocentre, the Amik Basin of Hatay Province, Turkey, by a second gorge, implicit of uplift, this time cut through Palaeogene limestone. The NE-SW oriented lowermost reach of the Orontes is again terraced, with a third and most dramatic gorge through the northern edge of the Ziyaret Dağı mountains, which are known to have experienced rapid uplift, probably again enhanced by movement on an active fault. Indeed, a conclusion of the research, in which these various reaches are compared, is that the crust in the Hatay region is significantly more dynamic than that further upstream, where uplift has been less rapid and less continuous.

“…The Nahr el Kebir ash Shamali, which enters the Mediterranean near Latakia and is Syria's third largest river, has a valuable sequence of river terraces from which significant assemblages of artefacts have been recovered (e.g., Hours, 1981Hours, , 1994Besançon et al, 1988;Sanlaville, 1977Sanlaville, , 1979Besancon and Sanlaville, 1981. Research here between 2004 and 2009 has led to reevaluation of the terrace record (Bridgland et al, 2008(Bridgland et al, , 2017. Prior to this recent work the accepted template for the sequence was that of Sanlaville (1979), who recognized four Kebir river terraces that he correlated with the four Alpine Pleistocene cold stages (glacials), noting their interdigitation near the coast with a staircase of interglacial raised beaches.…”

Section: The Palaeolithic Of the Nahr El-kebirmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluvial deposits as an archive of early human activity: Progress during the 20 years of the Fluvial Archives Group

Chauhan

Quaternary Science Reviews

Moncel

et al. 2017

Self Cite

Fluvial sedimentary archives are important repositories for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic artefacts throughout the 'Old World', especially in Europe, where the beginning of their study coincided with the realisation that early humans were of great antiquity. Now that many river terrace sequences can be reliably dated and correlated with the globally valid marine isotope record, potentially useful patterns can be recognized in the distribution of the find-spots of the artefacts that constitute the large collections that were assembled during the years of manual gravel extraction. This paper reviews the advances during the past two decades in knowledge of hominin occupation based on artefact occurrences in fluvial contexts, in Europe, Asia and Africa. As such it is an update of a comparable review in 2007, at the end of IGCP Project no. 449, which had instigated the compilation of fluvial records from around the world during 2000e2004, under the auspices of the Fluvial Archives Group. An overarching finding is the confirmation of the well-established view that in Europe there is a demarcation between handaxe making in the west and flakeecore industries in the east, although on a wider scale that pattern is undermined by the increased numbers of Lower Palaeolithic bifaces now recognized in East Asia. It is also apparent that, although it seems to have appeared at different places and at different times in the later Lower Palaeolithic, the arrival of Levallois technology as a global phenomenon was similarly timed across the area occupied by Middle Pleistocene hominins, at around 0.3 Ma.