The fault runs for about 20km onshore, between about Taieri Mouth and Toko Mouth, and possibly more than 40km just offshore further north and south, though its precise length is not yet known.
Fieldwork included digging a trench across the fault at Big Creek east of Milton, near the Akatore forest, and a second trench dug at Rocky Valley Stream.
The trenching sites were chosen as the streams there were dammed by fault ruptures and became swampy.
Organic material from these swampy, peaty sediments deposited following the large quakes were then carbon dated to calculate approximate dates for the events.
The first was estimated to have occurred sometime between 12,100 and 1280 years ago.
The second and third major Akatore Fault quakes then appeared to have happened very close together geologically speaking, between around 1280 years before now and 760 years ago.
"We have been trying to understand whether the fault has slipped enough during those three Holocene events or whether we should expect more earthquakes in the immediate future," Taylor-Silva said.
"More work is required to answer this question. However, I think we need to treat the Akatore Fault as a serious hazard.
"The episodic nature of the fault just makes it more difficult to estimate future earthquake hazards.
"With faults that have periodic ruptures, we can estimate how often an earthquake may be likely to occur, say, every X years, but we can't do that for the Akatore Fault very well.
"It's quite worrying for assessing the hazard the fault poses because we can't say there won't be another earthquake in the near future, as we don't really understand its behaviour."