PONE-D-20-29118

A Neolithic Mega-Tsunami Event in the Eastern Mediterranean: Prehistoric Settlement Resilience Along the Carmel Coast, Israel

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Manuscript Number: PONE-D-20-29118

Manuscript Title: A Neolithic Mega-Tsunami Event in the Eastern Mediterranean: Prehistoric Settlement Resilience Along the Carmel Coast, Israel

Review (28th Sep 2020)

This a very thoroughly designed piece of scientific research. It reports on a vast amount of field-work and which is presented in a compact and understandable manner. Congratulations ! In my function as reviewer I have some minor corrections and proposals, as follows:

(1) Time-units

(2) Titel and Conclusions

(3) Reference

(4) An Open Question

(1). Time Units:

In lines (inter alia): 224, 227, 242, 243, 245, 266,267,268

The use of time-scales ‘ya’ is non-standard and does not correspond to any known physical units of time measurements. Please replace by calBP. The same applies to the term ‘years ago’, for which the same applies. Both ‘ya’ and ‘years ago’ sound rather home-made.

(2). Titel and Conclusions:

Your use in the Titel of the buzzword ‘resilience’ contradicts your statement in the Conclusion that tsunamis played a ‘destabilizing role’. Either ‘resilience’ or ‘destabilizing’: Tertium non Datur. Looking closer, it becomes clear that you are differentiating between two periods, one (early Holocene) that has a lot of tsunamis, and the other (later Holocene) that has few tsunamis. A very nice result ! But, what this to do with ‘resilience’ or ’destabilization’ ? IF it is true – as you write – that the early Holocene PPNA-B settlements were mega-tsunami-destroyed, how can you know whether the corresponding societies were ‘tsunami-destabilized’ ? Similarly, IF it is true - as you write – that the many later PPNB-C sites indicate resettlement following the mega-tsunami, what can this have to do with ‘tsunami-resilience’ ? Does not the whole question boil down to what we know - or do not know - about societal reactions towards adverse conditions (whether fast or slow, whether climatic and/or society-internal). Of course, it is not your task to resolve these questions ! Even so, I think that the very word resilience is not particularly convincing , when applied to potential tsumami impact and societal consequences.

Proposal (in the Titel): Replace Resilience by Vulnerability.

(3). Reference

Line 386:

You write: Recovery from the early Holocene tsunami event was slow, possibly also affected by the 9,250 ya cold and arid climatic event [49].

But: reference [49] does not find evidence for impact of climate on prehistoric societies ! According to [49], prehistoric societies are resilient towards climate variability. If, at this point, you simply need a reference to demonstrate the existence of an 9,25 ka calBP climate event, and which is not cluttered up by the archaeological discussion of radiocarbon-based demography, you could take out [49] and replace it by Fleitmann & 2008:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2007PA001519

(4). Open Question

The following sentence is both misplaced and not understandable:

Line 376

By the PPNA and PPNB, the heartland of prehistoric settlement had shifted to the interior of the southern Levant [42,48].

True is (& perhaps you mean ?): the (well-known) major expansion both in size of sites as well as settlement area (call it ‘across the Jordan from West to East) at around 9.3 ka calBP, for which you might like to use as (earliest) reference the PhD by Hans-Georg Gebel (especially: Abb.3) :

https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/466

Reviewer #2: I recommend that this article should be published to open up discussion on the topic. The core argument is tantalizing and partly speculative, despite rigorous OSL analysis, and it may be beneficial to hear counter-arguments based on other lines of evidence. For example, does the proposed paleotsunami evidence indicate such a devastating impact that the entirety of ca. 4000 years of settlement evidence would have been completely destroyed? Perhaps one might expect even ephemeral traces of remaining architecture (slight though such architecture may have been in the LN/PPNA), or some surviving skeletal evidence (e.g. complete animal and/or human skeletons which might indicate the sudden impact of the tsunami; or injury evidence, and so on). Evidence for the lack of Late/Final Natufian and PPNA sites (which is not uncommon throughout the southern Levant at this time) could also be due to landscape/settlement practices by human communities, or to archaeological survey biases. All these factors would have to be discounted before a firm conclusion based on such a very localized event could be substantiated. But overall, this is a fascinating piece of research which deserves to be fully debated.

Reviewer #3: This paper presents evidence for a tsunami event at Dor in the Eastern Mediterranean, dated by OSL to have occurred at some point between 9910 and 9290 BP, or during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. This is very interesting information and this type of evidence is often overlooked in archaeology especially. The authors have studied the geological (and more, e.g. faunal) evidence extensively, and present detailed data. In total 8 OSL dates were done; the event is dated by 3 of those, so it would be good to confirm the dating further in future and especially to get a narrower range, but for now the dates at least are convincing and considering how difficult it is to date these events it is already adding much to our knowledge just with these dates. I therefore recommend publishing this paper, although I have a few comments below that I would like to see addressed first.

Comments:

1) My main comment is on the interpretation of how the tsunami event might have affected the communities living in the area. In terms of direct impacts on these communities and on the preservation of earlier sites, I agree that the sites in the area covered by the water would have been destroyed and eroded so that now they are not found, and this is a very interesting conclusion in itself. However, I am less convinced by taking the argument further to ascribe larger-scale socio-economic and population growth implications to the tsunami event. While it is certainly of interest to bring these ideas up, I think they should be discussed more carefully, taking into account: 1) the large range of the dating, so that it is difficult to be sure about the synchronicity between the tsunami and described changes in settlement patterns (e.g. the tsunami might have occurred only after the inland MPPNB sites grew; or it might have occurred only shortly before the LPPNB so that the impact was not long term, contra line 386); and 2) the area actually reconstructed to be destroyed, 1.5-3.5km inland in one area of the coast, relatively to the rest of the ‘Neolithic’ area. As such I would argue it goes too far to claim that the event would have caused “a reversal of the Neolithic Demographic Transition” (line 373) or to imply that absence of tsunami events allowed for “unhindered growth” afterwards (line 417-419).

2) Related to the above, I would also like to see more on where the site pattern information is based on. For example in Figure 2 it is very useful that submerged PPNC and PN sites are indicated, and in addition it would be very useful to see also the other, inland known sites by period. Currently five such sites are indicated but not coded by period, and it would be good to know if, and where, other sites of the period are within the map area (or, for which area on the map the ‘complete’ settlement pattern is given). Perhaps this could be a separate figure if this one gets too busy otherwise. In addition, it would be good to briefly discuss the background of the settlement pattern, and mainly if it could be affected by a research bias (e.g. a large research project focusing on a specific sub-area, or extensive building work and therefore rescue archaeology in certain places) or not. It is no problem if this turns out to be the case, it just needs to be taken into account.

3) Consistency in dates: Throughout the paper the way dates are presented should be made consistent. Currently yr, ka yr, years ago, calibrated years before present, and BC/AD (Supplementary Tables 1+2) are all used, which makes it confusing to the reader. The dating used for the archaeological periods in the Supplementary Information should also be the same as in the main text and throughout the text.

Specific, minor comments:

Line 58-60. Not so much rare in general, but for tsunami events I agree, although it might be worth citing some studies that have looked at this (e.g. Waddington and Wicks 2017 Journal of Archaeological Science).

Figure 1 and caption: it would be useful to have the names of the numbered sites here in the figure or in the caption, not only in the Supplementary Information.

Line 107-109: I would probably move this sentence to the Materials and Methods section and instead add here a sentence specifically stating the aims/objectives of the study.

Material and Methods:

-OSL dating: Was an age model done? If not, why not? And if yes, how was it done?

-Table 1: Please present the dates in a consistent way. It says in the caption they are in ka years, but in the table they are partly in years and partly in ka year.

Table 2: This could perhaps go in the Supplementary Information.

Lines 219-221: repetition, already stated in the Methods section

Line 424: “earliest” I suggest “earliest known”, there are probably earlier, yet undocumented ones

Supplementary Information:

-Very useful in general.

-What is the difference between Table S1 and S2? Why are these not in one table?

Because PLOS ONE does not do copy-editing, I add a few notes on typos and spelling here:

-Remove hyphens between adjectives and nouns, e.g. eastern-Mediterranean should be eastern (or Eastern) Mediterranean, early-Holocene should be early Holocene, marine-sand should be marine sand, and so on.

-Line 77: “Less” should be with lower case l

-“Suplement matirial” should be “Supplemental material” (or as called in PLOS ONE “Supporting Information”).

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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A Neolithic Mega-Tsunami Event in the Eastern Mediterranean: Prehistoric Settlement Vulnerability Along the Carmel Coast, Israel

PONE-D-20-29118R1

Dear Dr. Shtienberg,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Academic Editor

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Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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