Tree-rings, forest history and cultural heritage: current state and future prospects of dendroarchaeology in the Iberian Peninsula

Domínguez‐Delmás, Marta; Alejano, Reyes; Daalen, Sjoerd van; Rodríguez-Trobajo, Eduardo; García‐González, Ignacio; Susperregi, J.; Ważny, Tomasz; Jansma, E.

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2015.02.011

Cited by 20 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…For studies such as this, the amount of data available from any particular region and sub-region is largely related to the length of time during which tree-ring dating has been implemented to study historic buildings and to the continuity of those studies. In the southwestern part of Europe, for example, dendrochronological studies on historic buildings are almost absent in Portugal, and while they started in the 1980s for Spain (Richter, 1986;Richter and Eckstein, 1986), little has been published in spite of the abundance of built heritage (Rodriguez-Trobajo, 2008;Domínguez-Delmás et al, 2015, 2018). An exception is the Basque Country region in the northeast, where dendrochronological techniques are regularly applied in historic buildings since the late 1990s (Susperregi, 2007;Susperregi et al, 2017).…”

Section: Biases In the Collected Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

et al. 2022

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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.

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Section: Biases In the Collected Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

et al. 2022

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“…Information on spatial variation of climatic signals in tree rings is also important for archaeological and historical studies, as it serves as a basis for dating and determining the geographical origin of historical timbers (“dendroprovenancing”) (Speer, ). This can be used to identify source areas of wood, as well as for reconstructing wood–trade networks (Domínguez‐Delmás et al., ). Nowadays, dendroprovenancing is becoming more and more important also in terms of detection of illegal logging (Kagawa & Leavitt, ; Vlam et al., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi‐variable approach pinpoints origin of oak wood with higher precision

Akhmetzyanov

Buras

Sass‐Klaassen

et al. 2019

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Spatial variations of environmental conditions translate into biogeographical patterns of tree growth. This fact is used to identify the origin of timber by means of dendroprovenancing. Yet, dendroprovenancing attempts are commonly only based on ring‐width measurements, and largely neglect additional tree–ring variables. We explore the potential of using wood anatomy as a dendroprovenancing tool, and investigate whether it increases the precision of identifying the origin of oak wood. Since different tree–ring variables hold different information on environmental conditions prevailing at specific times of the growing season—which vary between source regions—we hypothesize that their inclusion allows more precise dendroprovenancing. Location Europe, Spain. Taxon Quercus robur L., Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl., Quercus faginea Lam., Quercus pyrenaica Willd. Methods We sampled four oak species across Northern Spain, i.e. from the Basque country and Cantabria and—in the Basque country—from low to high elevation (topographic/latitudinal gradient). We measured multiple tree–ring variables to (a) extract complementary variables; (b) present statistical relations among them; (c) analyse region‐specific variation in their patterns based on time–series of individual trees; and (d) determine underlying climate–growth relationships. Leave‐one‐out analysis was used to test whether a combination of selected variables allowed dendroprovenancing of a randomly selected tree within the area. Results A combination of latewood width (LW) and earlywood vessel size was used to pinpoint the origin of oak wood with higher precision than ring width or LW only. Variation in LW pinpointed the wood to east and west areas, whereas variation in vessels assigned wood to locations along a latitudinal/topographic gradient. The climatic triggers behind these gradients are respectively an east–west gradient in June–July temperature and a north–south gradient in winter/spring temperatures. The leave‐one‐out analyses supported the robustness of these results. Main conclusions Integration of multiple wood–xylem anatomical variables analysed with multivariate techniques leads to higher precision in the dendroprovenancing of ring‐porous oak species.

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“…High provenancing precision can also be achieved by creating a dense reference network of chronologies (Domínguez-Delmás et al, 2015). However, creating long TRW chronologies from lower elevations is sometimes hampered by intensive logging in the past .…”

Section: The Added Value Of Latewood Blue Intensity For Pine Timber Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Information on spatial variation of climatic signals in tree rings is also important for archaeological and historical studies, as it serves as a basis for dating and determining the geographical origin of historical timbers ("dendroprovenancing") (Speer, 2010). This can be used to identify source areas of wood, as well as for reconstructing wood-trade networks (Domínguez-Delmás et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pines have been intensively logged and used as a building material for centuries in the IP (Domínguez-Delmás et al, 2015;Domínguez-Delmás et al, 2018). Understanding timbertrade since at least the Middle Ages is particularly relevant in this area to understand the interactions between humans and their natural environment on past societies (Büntgen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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New tools for timber provenancing

Akhmetzyanov

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Tree-rings, forest history and cultural heritage: current state and future prospects of dendroarchaeology in the Iberian Peninsula

Cited by 20 publications

References 43 publications

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

Regional Patterns of Late Medieval and Early Modern European Building Activity Revealed by Felling Dates

Multi‐variable approach pinpoints origin of oak wood with higher precision

New tools for timber provenancing

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