[S04-1] Historical and macroseismic studies of earthquakes I

[S04-1-04] Earthquakes before 6 April 1667 in southern Dalmatia and Montenegro

^○Paola Albini, Andrea Rovida (INGV, Milano, Italy)

Although the area of southern Dalmatia (Croatia) and coastal Montenegro is known to be prone to large earthquakes, and characterised by high seismic hazard, the actual knowledge of its pre-instrumental seismicity, as described by catalogues and published studies, is still largely imperfect. The only exception is the recently reappraised M 6.4 earthquake of 6 April 1767, Dalmatia. With the scope of getting to a revised scenario of the seismicity of the region before the large 1767 earthquake, the echo of which for sure had cast a shadow over the information on previous events, a systematic survey was performed. Historical sources for the 14th to 17th centuries were searched for, and successfully retrieved, focusing on those not yet taken into account by previous seismological studies, and complementing an earlier survey carried out more than ten years ago. Before the reinterpretation of the historical records here proposed, the earliest earthquake to appear in current catalogues was dated to 1472. This informative gap was thus partially amended with a handful of new, though unfortunately isolated, records of 14th century earthquakes, and with a critical reappraisal of a set of large and moderate earthquakes along the following 250 years. The increase in type, number, and accuracy of testimonies and earthquake records made it possible to extend more than one century backwards the availability of robust sets of macroseismic intensity data, and to assess new earthquake parameters. The newly obtained data contribute to putting into a substantially different perspective the pre-1767 seismicity of southern Dalmatia and Montenegro.