[fennecfoxen]

> For most excavated squares, the newly exposed MB II surface from each day’s archeological excavation produced an obvious white salt crust overnight as humidity leached salt to the surface.

...

> we speculate that an impact into or an airburst above high-salinity surface sediments (26% of land in the southern Jordan Valley at > 1.3% salinity) and/or above the Dead Sea (with ~ 34 wt.% salt content) may have distributed hypersaline water across the lower Jordan Valley. If so, this influx of salt may have substantially increased the salinity of surface sediments within the city and in the surrounding fields. Any survivors of the blast would have been unable to grow crops and therefore likely to have been forced to abandon the area. After ~ 600 years, the high salt concentrations were sufficiently leached out of the salt-contaminated soil to allow the return of agriculture.