Ancient Buildings in the Village of Tsymyti (North Ossetia) as a Complex Instrumental Toolkit of Deformations of the Medieval and Modern Ages

The deformations revealed by us in the ancient buildings of the village of Tsymyti indicate very strong seismic oscillations. The displacement of a block weighing 25 t against the slope of the relief indicates very strong accelerations of the soil—more than 1 g. Thus, the local intensity of seismic oscillations is at least Il = IX–X. In the walls of ancestral towers and burial crypts, it is possible to identify a significant number of extended interblock cracks, tilts, and collapses of walls and their parts. Rotations of building elements and deformations of window openings are also revealed. The distribution of the tilts of the walls shows their general declination to the west. According to the same azimuth, the abovementioned multiton block was ejected. The deformation of the window openings also took place in the walls of the sublatitudinal orientation, i.e., possibly from the western direction. The age of the towers in Tsymyti has two periods: 15th–16th centuries (use in the construction of dry masonry without cement) and 16th–17th centuries (use of masonry with cement mortar). It is possible that the change in the type of construction was caused by a seismic event. The same earthquake, apparently, damaged the Dzivgis fortress, located lower down the valley of the Fiagdon River. The trend of the outer wall of the fortress coincided with the direction of seismic oscillations (along the east-northeast–west-southwest axis), which approximately coincides with the sublatitudinal direction of seismic oscillation in Tsymyti. The first earthquake probably also damaged the Gutnov family tower in Dzivgis, built in the 15th–16th centuries. The tower was mostly repaired, and the cracks visible in the walls of the tower to this day appeared in it during the second earthquake, which apparently caused the destruction of buildings in the village of Dzivgis. The age of these buildings dates back to the 18th–19th centuries. The age of the necropolis in Tsymyti was determined by archaeologists as the 17th–18th centuries. Heavily destroyed crypts are apparently a consequence of the second earthquake in the region. The crypts that received minor damage are probably the result of the third earthquake. In Dzivgis, in the 19th century, the third earthquake led to a rockfall that deformed the metal cemetery fences; this seismic event occurred after 1878. Additional field and desk studies are necessary for a more complete parameterization of ancient seismic events, as well as the localization of ancient epicentral zones in certain structures of the crust of the region.