Research into the dates of timber used for art‐historical objects has provided a large data set on which to test standard dendrochronological techniques. Some 177 sets of tree‐ring measurements, originally analysed by the late Dr J. M. Fletcher at Oxford University, have been re‐examined independently in the tree‐ring laboratories at the University of Sheffield and the Museum of London Archaeology Service. The results show a high level of agreement between the laboratories. In contrast, many of the dates produced by Dr Fletcher for the paintings are not confirmed. The two different approaches described here also resulted in remarkably similar internal groupings of the dated material. These groupings probably reflect the provenance of the timbers and suggest that two different areas of the eastern Baltic supplied the bulk of the material with smaller quantities of panels originating in Britain and central Europe.

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The mid 1980s saw the calibration of radiocarbon by reference to the dendrochronology of European oaks. The dating by direct tree-ring measurements ofwood from waterlogged archaeological sites has proved more difficult. Now there is a dendrochronology for the English Neolithic, that allows the dating of the Sweet Track in the Somerset Levelsalready known to be the oldest trackway in Europe -to the year of its building.

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The ages of prehistoric fires can be approximated by radiocarbon dating of charcoal or associated material, but such dating is often inaccurate and at best imprecise. Pine trunks preserved in British and Irish peats occasionally show firescars, which might be dated through dendrochronology to yield calendar-year dates. However, unlike oak, there is no master pine chronology to provide absolute dates, so dating is dependent on interspecies cross-matching; for sites in the British Isles with no dated oaks, calendar-year dating of prehistoric pines has hitherto proved impossible. We present a first success in dating, accurately and precisely, prehistoric fire events recorded in subfossil bog-pine trunks, using long-distance cross-matching of pine chronologies between White Moss, Cheshire, and the Humberhead Levels, England. Results demonstrate a bog-fire in Cheshire in spring 2800 bc, and again in 2710 bc, between spring and summer. Further successful long-distance cross-matching of pine would permit international climatological comparisons.