Dendrochronology and Past Human Activity—A Review of Advances Since 2000

Abstract

Since 2000, important advances have been made worldwide in the dendrochronology of wood associated with past human activity and cultural heritage. This review summarizes this recent progress in regions with a longstanding tradition of using tree-ring methods, such as Europe and the USA, as well as others such as Asia where developments have been particularly rapid in recent years. The oldest wood generally originates from archaeological sites and the largest amount of wood for research comes from historical structures such as monumental and vernacular architecture. In addition to construction wood, wooden doors, ceilings, furniture, objects of art (such as panel paintings and sculptures), Medieval books, musical instruments and boats can also be utilized. Dating is the first and crucial step of the research and is often difficult even in regions where dendrochronology has a long history of use. In addition to absolute dates, dendrochronology has provided extra information that has enhanced historical knowledge from other sources. Behavioral and environmental inferencing and dendroprovenancing are becoming major areas of research in regions with well-developed networks of reference chronologies and active cooperation among laboratories. The online Bibliography of Dendrochronology and information from conferences have been indispensable in this compilation, because much work related to dendrochronology in cultural heritage is still published in ''gray'' literature, making it difficult to access.

Potential for a New Multimillennial Tree-Ring Chronology from Subfossil Balkan River Oaks

“…Oak is arguably the single most important genus for European dendrochronology and its use and usefulness for the study of Europe's wooden cultural heritage has been thoroughly reviewed (Čufar 2007;Haneca et al 2009). It has been a dominant woodland species across central Europe since 12,000 BP (Sadori et al 2011), growing under a wide variety of ecological conditions (Ducousso and Bordacs 2004), and, as it is durable and resistant to decay (Haneca et al 2005), the preservation of a wide temporal spread of material for a given region is very possible.…”

Oaks, tree-rings and wooden cultural heritage: a review of the main characteristics and applications of oak dendrochronology in Europe

“…Despite this, dendrochronology helps to obtain and better interpret information about human colonization of the area, as well the palaeo-environment (e.g. Cufar and Martinelli, 2004;Cufar and Velušček, 2004;Cufar, 2007;Grabner et al, 2007).…”

“…Since then, many archaeological surveys have benefited from dendrochronological dating (e.g. Baillie, 1995Baillie, , 2002Cufar, 2007). Among the oldest, dendrochronologically well investigated archaeological sites are the prehistoric lake shore settlements (pile dwellings) from the circum Alpine region in Europe.…”

Tree-Ring Chronology of Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur) and its Potential for Development of Dendrochronological Research in Croatia

“…Friedrichs et al, 2009a, b;Kern et al, 2009;Haupt et al 2011; Levanič et al, 2011). In addition, they were used for dating of archaeological wood and artefacts from historic constructions and archaeological sites (e.g., for review see Čufar, 2007;Haneca et al, 2009).…”