Dendrochronological Dating of the Lund-Spathelf House, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Abstract

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...

Dendrochronological Dating of the Historic Mckenzie Home, Meigs County, Tennessee, USA

“…based on known range distributions. Because of the durable nature of the wood, oak trees were commonly used for building construction in the Southeastern United States during settlement periods (Grissino-Mayer 2009;Harley et al 2011).…”

“…These log structures can be analyzed through the lens of tree-ring science (Grissino-Mayer 2009). Dendrochronological techniques have become a welldeveloped and applicable method for the accurate dating of the year of construction for historic log structures throughout the Southeastern United States (Stahle 1979;Stahle and Wolfman 1985;Grissino-Mayer and van de Gevel 2007;Mann et al 2009;Henderson et al 2009;Slayton et al 2009;Harley et al 2011;Grissino-Mayer et al 2013).…”

Potentiality of Charcoal as a Dendrochronological and Paleoclimatic Archive: Case Study of Archaeological Charcoal from Southeastern Altai, Russia

“…The tree ring width, as well as the earlywood and latewood linear parameters, were measured manually using the CooRecorder 9.3 (CR) software [48]. The measured tree rings were dated in a standard way by graphical and visual crossdating techniques [49] combined with cross-correlation analysis using the DPL program package especially designed for dendrochronology [50] and the TSAP V3.5 software [51]. The age trend in each series was removed by spline standardization, 2 /3 of the series length [52].…”