The Eastern Mediterranean

The Eastern Mediterranean is the site of 5 deep-sea basins that were discovered in the 1980s (e.g., Jongsma et al. 1983) and 1990s (MEDRIFF-Consortium 1996). Detailed noble gas studies were completed in three of them, the Elrania, Atalante and Discovery brines, in order to investigate their origin and fluid kinematics. 

AIR/SEA GAS EXCHANGE STUDIED BY DUAL TRACER RELEASE EXPERIMENTS 

C method. The most widely used tracers are He in combination 

Dispersion and gas exchange rates in unconfmed natural water systems can be determined using two volatile gaseous tracers with different gas exchange rates if the ratio of the gas exchange rates is known. The gas exchange rate of a gas is proportional to the Schmidt number (defined as the kinematic viscosity of water divided by the molecular diffusivity of the gas in water) of the gas raised to an exponent n (Jahne et al. 

For wavy, unbroken water surfaces without bubble entrainment, n has been shown to be -0.5 in both laboratory experiments (Jahne et al. 1984 Ledwell 1984 Asher et al. 

Michael D. Krom, Steven Groom and Tamar Zohary 

The concentration of dissolved nutrients in the deep waters of the Eastern Mediterranean is much lower than those in other oceans of the world, and when these are mixed into the surface waters they support very low primary productivity. The basic reason for this ultra-oligotrophic status is that the Mediterranean has an anti-estuarine (reverse thermohaline) circulation in which nutrient-depleted surface waters flow into the western basin at the Straits of Gibraltar and then on into the eastern basin at the Straits of Sicily. The deeper counter current consists of Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW) which contains a significant amount of dissolved nutrients. 

In addition to this net export of nutrients, the Eastern Mediterranean is the largest body of water in the world in which the primary productivity is phosphorus limited (Krom etal., 1991). The deep waters of the eastern basin have a nitrate/phosphate ratio of 25-28 1 compared to 22 1 in the Western Mediterranean and 15-17 1 found generally in the world s oceans. These 

The Mediterranean Sea is an ocean basin that is gradually closing as the African Plate moves north and collides with Europe. It is the remains of the far larger and more extensive Tethys ocean. In the comparatively recent geological past (Late Miocene, 7.5-5 million years ago), there were periods when the basin was completely dried out. This has resulted in the extensive deposits of salt that underlie much of the sea-bed (and surrounding areas) of the present-day Mediterranean. It is the source of the salt found in the several small saline pools (e.g. Bannock Basin) which are found within the Eastern Mediterranean basin. 

There is good evidence that recent man-induced environmental and climate change is having a noticeable effect on the physical circulation and on the biogeochemistry of this most sensitive of ecosystems that will be discussed at the end of this chapter. 

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Cumin Seed. Cumin spice is the dried ripe fmit of Cuminum cyminum L. (UmbeUiferae). The seed-Uke fmit is elongated about 0.31 to 0.63 cm and is yeUowish brown. It is native to upper Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, but is now cultivated in Pakistan, Turkey, India, China, and Syria. It has a strong pecuhar aroma and flavor, pleasing to some and offensive to others. Cumin seed is used in chutney and curry, chili powders, chili con came, cheeses, and the pickling of cabbage. 

Mean tar concentrations on the Israeli coast of the Mediterranean Sea ranged from 884 to 4388 g m in 1975-76 (27). Chemical analyses indicated that 76% of the tar on Israeli beaches was weathered crude, 96% of it from Middle Eastern sources (28). Concentrations of tar on the beaches of Lebanon and Turkey appeared to be much lower than those at Alexandria, Egypt and Paphos, Cyprus, as a consequence of the orientation of these beaches relative to a site in the eastern Mediterranean Sea where dumping of oily sludge was permitted (27). 

Matthews A, Ayalon A, Bar-Matthews M (2000) D/H ratios of flnid inclnsions of Soreq cave (Israel) speleothems as a gnide to the Eastern Mediterranean Meteoric Line relationships in the last 120 ky. ChemGeol 166 183-191... 

FIGURE 22 Obsidian in the eastern Mediterranean Sea area. Studying the relative concentration of trace elements in obsidian makes it possible to identify the obsidian and to determine its provenance. Determining the relative amounts of barium and zirconium in ancient obsidian tools and in samples from different sources of the natural glass, for example, made it possible to identify the provenance of obsidian used in eastern Mediterranean Sea area sites (Renfrew and Dixon 1976). 

Ribera I, Blasco-Zumeta J (1998) Biogeographical links between steppe insects in the Monegros region (Aragon, NE Spain), the eastern Mediterranean, and central Asia. J Biogeogr 25 969-986... 

SOURCES OF OBSIDIAN IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AND NEIGHBOURING REGIONS... 

For the reasons outlined above, outcrops of workable obsidian are relatively few in number and are restricted to areas of geologically recent lava flows. Most sources are therefore reasonably well known, and, because of these constraints, identification of new sources in the eastern Mediterranean region becomes ever more unlikely. This makes the exercise of characterizing archaeological obsidians an attractive proposition, since, unlike potential clay sources for pottery provenance, the existence of completely unknown sources can be (cautiously) ignored. This is, of course, subject to the requirement noted above for more detailed geochemical characterization of existing sources. 

In the absence of an assumed underlying normal distribution, simple bivariate plotting does not lead to an estimate of the true extent of the parent isotope field. This is particularly a problem if only relatively few samples are available, as is usually the case. Kernel density estimation (KDE Baxter et al., 1997) offers the prospect of building up an estimate of the true shape and size of an isotope field whilst making few extra assumptions about the data. Scaife et al. (1999) showed that lead isotope data can be fully described using KDE without resort to confidence ellipses which assume normality, and which are much less susceptible to the influence of outliers. The results of this approach are discussed in Section 9.6, after the conventional approach to interpreting lead isotope data in the eastern Mediterranean has been discussed. 

Figure 9.7 Map of some of the more important prehistoric copper sources in the eastern Mediterranean. (Adapted from Stos-Gale and Gale, 1990 Figure 1, in Thera and the Aegean World III, published with permission of the Thera Foundation, London, and the authors.)... 

This massive study of prehistoric pottery in the eastern Mediterranean serves to highlight a number of issues relating to the scientific study of provenance, beyond the obvious scientific and archaeological questions of how do the analyses relate to the archaeological question (Wilson and... 

The most intense NAA study of archaeological ceramics has been focused on the Bronze Age Mycenaean and Minoan pottery of Greece and Crete, and related areas around the eastern Mediterranean (Mommsen et al. 2002). This work began in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s with the work of Perlman and Asaro (1969), who went on to analyze 878 shards of pottery. The results were never fully published according to Asaro and Perlman (1973, 213), the question of provenience of the vast quantities of Mycenaean wares has... 

Asaro, F. and Perlman, I. (1973). Provenience studies of Mycenean pottery employing neutron activation analysis. In Acts of the International Archaeological Symposium The Myceneans in the Eastern Mediterranean , Nicosia 27th March-2nd April 1972, Cyprus, Nicosia, Department of Antiquities, pp. 213-224. 

Bichler, M., Egger, H., Preisinger, A., Ritter, D., and Strastny, P. (1997). NAA of the Minoan pumice at Thera and comparison to alluvial pumice deposits in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 224 7-14. 

Sachs, J. P., and D. J. Repeta. 1999. Oligotrophy and nitrogen fixation during the eastern Mediterranean sapropels events. Science 286 2485-2488. 

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