Numerous charcoal kiln remains can still be found throughout the world, evidencing wood harvesting related to former industries. These remains represent effective sources and tools for studying (i) pre-industrial pressures on forest resources and (ii) past strategies related to woodland management. However, radiocarbon dating (AMS), which is the main tool to reconstruct the chronology of past charcoal manufacturing activity, doesn't provide sufficiently accurate dating, especially for the post-1650 period, due to the broad probability range of the dates resulting from wiggles in the calibration curve. In order to overcome the radiocarbon dating limitation and therefore refine the chronology of modern charcoal manufacturing, this paper proposes to apply an integrated approach combining archaeology, micromorphology, anthracology and dendrochronology. To characterise the archaeological record of a target charcoal kiln terrace from the "Forêt de Bernadouze", located in a historical iron production valley of the Northern Pyrenees, we combined classical stratigraphic analysis with a micromorphological study. The results highlight the multiperiod nature of the terrace, i.e. a palimpsest of multiple charcoal production episodes, revealing two major phases marked by an abandonment period between them. Subsequently, we constructed a beech charcoal-ring (n=49) chronology cross-dated with the new "Forêt de Bernadouze" reference chronology from freshly felled, living beech trees (n=24) to obtain the annual resolution of charcoal ring formation. Based on the new reconstructed master chronology covering the 1879-2016 period, we were able to calibrate the charcoal-ring chronology for the 1881-1941 period. Consequently, we (i) dated the charcoal production activity performed on the target terrace during the 1924-1942 period and (ii) identified a shift in the rate of use of the terrace, from one-off to high-intensive use. This study also provides new insights regarding (i) the particular nature of the archaeological record and (ii) the operating and timing of past charcoal-making practices in connection with silvicultural treatments.
Although variations in building activity are a useful indicator of societal well-being and demographic development, historical datasets for larger regions and longer periods are still rare. Here, we present 54,045 annually precise dendrochronological felling dates from historical construction timber from across most of Europe between 1250 and 1699 CE to infer variations in building activity. We use geostatistical techniques to compare spatiotemporal dynamics in past European building activity against independent demographic, economic, social and climatic data. We show that the felling dates capture major geographical patterns of demographic trends, especially in regions with dense data coverage. A particularly strong negative association is found between grain prices and the number of felling dates. In addition, a significant positive association is found between the number of felling dates and mining activity. These strong associations, with well-known macro-economic indicators from pre-industrial Europe, corroborate the use of felling dates as an independent source for exploring large-scale fluctuations of societal well-being and demographic development. Three prominent examples are the building boom in the Hanseatic League region of northeastern Germany during the 13th century, the onset of the Late Medieval Crisis in much of Europe c. 1300, and the cessation of building activity in large parts of central Europe during armed conflicts such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648 CE). Despite new insights gained from our European-wide felling date inventory, further studies are needed to investigate changes in construction activity of high versus low status buildings, and of urban versus rural buildings, and to compare those results with a variety of historical documentary sources and natural proxy archives.
Numerous dendroarchaeological studies have been carried out in buildings in the south-eastern quarter of France, which has enabled us to lay the foundations for a first regional restitution of forest stands in the medieval and modern periods, based on the species, diameters, ages and growth rhythms of the trees used by humans. The 2369 pieces of dated softwood timber are mainly larch and fir from the Massif Central and the Alps mountains. Larch seems to have been used mostly locally in the Alps, whereas fir was certainly exported from the two regions to the lowland towns. Very little felling has been identified in the historically troubled 13th–14th century. For the moment we have not identified any fir trees used before the 15th century in the Alps, whereas they are present in the Massif Central from the 12th century. Growth of fir timbers show little variation over time while larch timbers present an increase in growth between those felled until the 12th century and those felled from the 15th century onwards. Finally, since firs from the Massif Central show a higher age trend than those from the Alps, this can serve as a model for identifying the source forests of the timber used in the Rhône valley.
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