Fire-maintained ecosystems and associated species are becoming increasingly rare in the southern Appalachian Mountains because of fire suppression policies implemented in the early 20th century. Restoration of these communities through prescribed fire has been hindered by a lack of information on historical fire regimes. To characterize past fire regimes, we collected and absolutely dated the tree rings on cross sections from 242 fire-scarred trees at three different sites in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Our objectives were to (1) characterize the historical frequency of fire in southern Appalachian mixed pine-oak forests, (2) assess the impact of interannual climatic variability on the historical occurrence of fire, and (3) determine whether changes in human culture and land use altered the frequency of fire. Results demonstrate that fires burned frequently at all three sites for at least two centuries prior to the implementation of fire suppression and prevention in the early to mid 20th century. Composite mean fire return intervals were 2-4 yr, and point mean fire return intervals were 9-13 yr. Area-wide fires that burned across multiple stands occurred at 6-13-yr intervals. The majority of fires were recorded during the dormant season. Fire occurrence exhibited little relationship with reconstructed annual drought conditions. Also, fire activity did not change markedly during the transition from Native American to Euro-American settlement or during the period of industrial logging at the start of the 20th century. Fire activity declined significantly, however, during the fire suppression period, with a nearly complete absence of fire during recent decades. The characterization of past fire regimes should provide managers with specific targets for restoration of fire-associated communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The fire chronologies reported here are among the longest tree-ring reconstructions of fire history compiled for the eastern United States and support the hypothesis that frequent burning has played a long and important role in the development of forests in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

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In recent decades, agencies charged with managing historic structures and sites have found dendroarchaeological studies increasingly valuable, given the ability of such studies to verify (or refute) accepted dates of construction. The Ximénez-Fatio House has well-documented historical and cultural significance for the state of Florida, as it is one of St. Augustine's oldest, best-preserved, and most studied historic properties. According to documentary sources, the two-story coquina-stone main house was reportedly built around 1797-1798, and included a one-story wing of warehouses, giving the house a distinctive ''L'' shape. Documentary evidence also suggests that a second story was added above the wing sometime between 1830 and 1842. However, after studying the building fabric itself, historical architects now believe the entire wing of the house was remodeled two decades later in the 1850s. Our goals were to: (1) determine the probable construction years for the original house and wing using tree-ring dating techniques, and (2) verify the probable construction year for the remodeling that occurred in the wing section of the house. A total of 74 core samples were extracted from longleaf pine (Pinus palustris P. Miller) timbers used to construct the house. Twenty-six were confidently crossdated both visually and statistically against each other to produce a 185-year floating tree-ring chronology. A statistically significant (p , 0.0001) correlation between our chronology and a longleaf pine chronology from Lake Louise, Georgia, anchors our chronology between 1673 and 1857. No cutting dates were obtained from the main house, but the lack of any tree rings that post-date 1798 supports the 1797 construction date. Furthermore, cutting dates obtained from beams in the first-floor wing revealed that the extensive remodeling of the wing likely occurred in the period 1856 to 1858 soon after the house had been purchased by Louisa Fatio in 1855.

The Lund-Spathelf House is located at 1526 Pontiac Trail in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During a recent renovation, the owner sought information regarding the construction of the house by searching through numerous written records. Despite an extensive history of the land on which the house currently sits, neither a construction year nor general period of construction could be obtained. Therefore, four samples of oak (Quercus spp.) were extracted from floor boards throughout the house for dendrochronological dating. The four samples crossdated conclusively with each other both visually and statistically and were used to build a floating 126-year tree-ring chronology. We used COFECHA to statistically evaluate the absolute temporal placement of this chronology against a nearby regional chronology (MI005.CRN) from the Cranbrook Institute, Michigan. The LundSpathelf House chronology was anchored in time with the regional chronology from A.D. 1720 to 1845 with a correlation coefficient of 0.62 (p , 0.0001, t , 8.76, n 5 126). All four oak samples provided conclusive cutting dates of A.D. 1845, indicating the year the Lund-Spathelf House was constructed.Keywords: Tree rings, dendrochronology, construction history, Michigan, US Midwest. INTRODUCTIONThe urban development of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is like most other cities in the United States with older neighborhoods surrounding a central commercial district and each neighborhood possessing a distinct architectural style. Consistent growth of the built environment has made restoring historic structures increasingly popular (Reade and Wineberg 1992). Establishing a construction date for a restored structure is important to homeowners who wish to authenticate the structure's historical significance or place it on the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places. Usually, a construction date can be obtained by searching through deeds, census data, wills, or maps at local municipal offices or libraries. However, if searching the documentary records fails, other techniques, such as dendrochronology, can be used (Grissino-Mayer and van de Gevel 2007;Grissino-Mayer 2009).Dendroarchaeology, the study of historic and prehistoric structures or objects using techniques of dendrochronology, has increased in recent decades (Grissino-Mayer 2009;Towner 2002). In the United States, the majority of dendroarchaeological research has been conducted in the Southwest (Douglass 1921;Dean 1978;Bekker and Heath 2007;Towner et al. 2009) and the Southeast (Stahle 1979;Bortolot et al. 2001;Grissino-Mayer and van de Gevel 2007;van de Gevel et al. 2009). Relatively few dendroarchaeological studies have been conducted in the Midwestern US at either prehistoric sites (Hawley-Senter 1938;Bell 1951) or on historic era structures (Grissino-Mayer 2000; Lehmann et al. 2006; Fuerner and Taylor 2008).The Lund-Spathelf House is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Figure 1). During a recent renovation, the owner sought information regard- HOUSE AND SITE DESCRIPTIONThe Lund-Spathelf House is locate...