Dendrochronology and Tree-Ring Studies in Archaeology

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Abstract

Since the year 2000, significant progression has been completed worldwide in the dendrochronology of wood coupled with past human action and intellectual custom. This review sum up this current development in areas with a longstanding tradition of using tree-ring technique, such as Europe and the USA, as well as others such as Asia where improvement have been chiefly fast in recent years. The oldest wood usually begins from archaeological location and the largest amount of wood for research appears from historical arrangement such as colossal and dialect architecture. In addition to construction wood, wooden doors, ceilings, furniture, objects of art (such as board paintings and carving), medieval books, musical instruments and boats can also be use. Dating is the primary and vital step of the research and is frequently complex even in regions where dendrochronology has a long history of use. In addition to fixed dates, dendrochronology has presented additional information that has improved historical knowledge from other foundation. Behavioral and environmental inferencing and dendroprovenancing are appropriate in foremost areas of research and in regions with well-developed system of orientation to chronologies and with dynamic collaboration among laboratories.

Tree-Ring Research

Currently, dendrochronology is the solitary dating technique that presents a ruling which is fewer than or the same to a one year. Dendrochronology is chiefly helpful in the historical ground for the reason that it can conclude the ante quem non-perimeter, that is the year before which an entity could not have been produced because it is the final growth ring-shaped by the tree before felling.

The majority of general factors that avoid the use of dendrochronological dating include:

An insufficient quantity of rings, the existence of a group inappropriate for dating through dendrochronology, the lack of convincing indication of chronologies for the wood species or the place of the source of the wooden item. Once such conditions take place, dendrochronological dating by itself cannot be used, and radiocarbon dating is typically engaged.

Dendrochronology has been distinct as “the dating of yearly growth of coating in wood plants and the utilization of the environmental experiences which they contain,” (Fritts 1971). The science is stand on the basis that the yearly growth rings of trees differ from year to year, mainly in accordance to the climatic circumstances.

The primary foundation of dendrochronology is the yearly growth ring which forms inside the bark by the partition of cambial cells. Huge, thin-walled wood or xylem cells (earlywood) are formed at the start of the growing season, and small, thick-walled wood cells (latewood) towards the last part of the budding season. The sudden transformation in cell size among the last-formed wood of one year and the first-formed wood of the next year frequently defines the border between the annual growth increase and annual rings (Fritts 1966).

Brief History of Method

A. E. Douglass leads the way for tree-ring work on living trees at the beginning of this century, developing a 3,220 year-long evidence of ring widths from the giant sequoia (Douglass 1919; Douglass 1928). Douglass established that the widths of yearly rings in trees can connect with differences in climate and that their exceptional succession of wide and narrow rings can be acknowledged and the similar outline cross-matched (cross-dated) in felled trees from adjoining areas. Cross-dating from living trees to dead trees made it likely to determine the actual year in which the dead trees were felled. The dynamic planned of tree-ring research that goes after this breakthrough led to the new discipline called dendrochronology. By statistically evaluated timbers alongside recognized UK master chronologies dating back to 5289 BC, it is now feasible to get precise calendar year dates for timbers of a variety of species by dendrochronological analysis.

Dating

Dendrochronology is utilized in archaeology, building history, and art history for precise dating of the tree-ring outline of wood (Schweingruber, 1988). The standard is that the distinction in tree-ring width is to a large degree predisposed by climate. This means that tree-ring showing of trees of a similar grouping rising in a definite environmental area can be cross-dated and averaged into so-called master chronologies. Regional master chronologies are computed from the tree-ring chain of thousands of tree-ring orders from a similar geographical region. By having common characteristics and cross-dating tree-ring sequences from living trees with those calculated from historical, archaeological, and sub-fossil wood, long chronologies have been constructing that can reach back for thousands of years. At the moment, an association of hundreds of master chronologies of unlike tree species has been built up for Europe (and the rest of the world). These regional master chronologies provide references for dating. To date a tree-ring series measured from a part of the wood of unidentified age, is statistically evaluated with all available regional master chronologies. If a match signifies by highly considerable t-values or connection (Baillie, 1982) is established, every tree ring of the cycle can be assigned to a calendar year. The final formed tree ring beneath the bark shows the felling date of the tree.

Dendroprovenancing

Dendroprovenancing is somewhat a new method to find out the origin of wood, i.e., the place where a tree was growing that was later used as, e.g., foundation pile. At this moment, studies on dendroprovenancing focused mostly on the importation of high-class oak timber for (ship) building (Bonde et al., 1997) and art-historical objects (Wazny, 2002; Haneca et al., 2005). Though, by research on wood transport throughout Europe, dendroprovenancing was effectively used to rebuild former trade relations (Bonde, 1992; Bonde et al., 1997; Wazny, 1992, 2002).

Technique

Complete cross-sections offered the utmost amount of information. While cutting these is both unfeasible and prohibited (from a living tree or an important architectural monument), the dendrochronologist is forced to route to coring. A Swedish augmentation corer is used to obtain out the small radial core from standing trees, and a variety of commercially – easy get drillbits are applied to dig out similar radial cores from the entire structural design of timbers. P. Klein and colleagues in the Hamburg laboratory have had fine achievement with some 2000 oil paintings painted on wooden board by surfacing the end-grain with a razor blade and assessing directly from the panel (Eckstein, et al., 1983). In unusual instances, an excellent, high-contrast photograph of the end-grain has permitted a piece of wood to be dated. The difficulty of photographs is that microscopically small, rings are roughly unfeasible to distinguish except for the photographer who had the consideration to do some rub down and cleaning before taking the photograph. For both part and the central part it is vital to take in as much of the sapwood where it is present and to avoid knots, cracks, and other blemishes which disfigure the patterns of ring growth. In some instance, if the outermost layer of the tree is present, or the ‘waney edge’, the engagement when the tree was knockdown can discover out to the year. For oaks, if a considerable number of sapwood is conserved, the felling date can be projected with varying amountsinstancescross datedside several years. Further species, or in oaks with small or no sapwood and an indefinite amount of missing heartwood, only a boundary post quem date is likely.

Technique analysis

The exterior of the example to be calculated is equipped with fine sandpaper or a razor blade so that each ring can be measured and morphological peculiarity is noted, typically under a binocular dissecting microscope. after that, whether a conventional (‘the Douglass method’) or an extra sophisticated technique is applied, the more advance in sequence jointly with the whole dimension of the ring-series and a mixture of types of numerical investigation, the rings have to be harmonized to one and the other. Once wood or charcoal sampling have been crossdated, they are then set in arrangement, starting with an unlimited-dated tree, and a chronology is put up in a step-wise manner into the past as far back as the proof will permit.

Progress of dendrochronology

Since archaeology has developed from its rather prehistoric beginnings, so, too, dendrochronology has advanced from a relatively imperfect focus on the dating of monuments or archaeological level. In addition to the straightforward ring-width measurements pioneered by Douglass (1919, 1928, 1936), whether skeleton, scheme, or measured, new logical procedures include X-radiography, X-ray densitometry, and neutron activation analysis, among others, to study morphological and chemical alteration within particular rings or cells or to identify the occurrence of specific trace-elements and isotopes.

The functional dendrochronological subject now comprises the study of changes in both the instant and isolated environment (Dean 1988), the history and effects of pollution (Schweingruber 1988), stream erosion and infill (LaMarche 1966), forest fires (Swetnam 1993), earthquakes (Lamarche and Wallace 1972; Jacoby, et al., 1992), glacial movement (LaMarche and Fritts 1971), volcanoes (LaMarche and Hirschboeck, 1984; Kuniholm, et al., 1996), tsunamis, seasonal river flooding, insect life-cycles, human intervention in the forest, and changes in wood utilization and exploitation (Billamboz 1988; Dean 1978), etc. Schweingruber (1988) offers an amazing illustrated listing, with a bibliography, of many of these fields and subfields into which dendrochronological research has progressed.

Radiocarbon calibration and wiggle-matching

The chronicle of the tree-ring calibration of the radiocarbon time-scale is or must be well recognized by nearly all archaeologists (Suess 1970, Stuiver, et al., 1993, 1998). What is less familiar is the application of ‘wiggle-matching,’ where chosen decade-long slices cut from a piece of wood at detailed period are individually radiocarbon-dated, and then the entire collection of dates is matched to the radiocarbon arc (Kuniholm 1996).

Dendrochronology in the field of Archaeology

There are of course distinguished dissimilarities in the duration and value of historical records in different parts of the worlds, the chronological partition within archaeology which can be freely classifiedas the final millennium or the era of extensive detailed records, the time of just over a millennium that cover the first millennium AD and the end of the first millennium BC or the period of incomplete record maintenance but where at least the dating of the historical record is quite safe, and prehistory or the period before the first few centuries BC in which the past differ from in total absent, to badly dated, to highly contained.

The relations between archaeology and dendrochronology are somewhat diverse in each of these periods. For the final millennium, dendrochronological exposure is so huge that high levels of dating achievement are now feasible, be it in the wide transect from Ireland to Poland, the Eastern Mediterranean, or North America. In this era, outside America, chronological records are normally at chronological decree; with the consequence that dendrochronology is to do something to improve chronology and is unlikely to expose key lapse in historical/archaeological chronology.

Dendrochronology can provide an improved dating background wherever it is useful. Nevertheless, the poorer the chronological evidence provided by history/archaeology in previous periods opens up different chances. There were three expansive areas of interaction between dendrochronology and archaeology moving back through the first millennium:

There are circumstances where the outcome of dendrochronological analysis can verify history/archaeology; for example, a well-known felling date matches exactly with conservative or acknowledged understanding.
There are circumstances where ultimate felling dates make it clear that the previous information which has come down is imperfect in some way; for example, when the dendro dates for timbers from Roman Carlisle are found to be consistently earlier than the ‘traditional’ date of the fort (Hillam, 1992).
For the most part common situation is where past historical or archaeological information is either indistinct or non-existent; here dendrochronology can present totally new, and occasionally unforeseen, dates. A classic Irish example is the AD 148 BC date for the Corlea bog roadway; a roadway that had initially been loosely assigned to the ‘Bronze Age’ by archaeologists (Baillie, 1995).

From an archaeological perspective, whether archaeologists are ready for it or not, the incidence of this package of information, set in time around 1627 BC, means that all pertinent archaeology will unavoidably have to fit itself around this date. Frankly, well-dated locations can be argued concerning this occurrence, poorly dating sites cannot. Archaeologists will have to decide if they want their position to be part of the bigger picture represented here or to simply add period color. Such choices have insinuation for which sites are excavated, how sites are excavated, what is dated, and the quantity of resource dedicated to chronology as go up against, say, to relic protection.

In general, the reason for these circumstances should be the progress of demands on the archaeological society to focus their resources on sites that suggest the potential for refined dating; to decide on sites and relate resources to finding out the true age of human activity. The involvement of dendrochronologists ought to give a much clearer chronological and environmental structure, which is helpful to archaeologists.

Implication for succeeding years

The accessibility of a constant high-precision calibration curve for radiocarbon dates. It is at the present understood that the least amount sensible normal difference associated with a custom radiocarbon date is c+/- 80 years. This can be affirmed since the results of interlaboratory studies carried out in recent years. It is also currently recognized that practical standard difference of c+/- 20 years can be accomplished in high-precision laboratories. These innovative high-precision dates in combination with the high-precision calibration curve present dating approximation radically better than conformist routine dates. Archaeologists will have to move toward conditions with the insufficiency of their accessible radiocarbon-based chronologies.

On the other hand, more significant than this development in radiocarbon technology must be the future availability of dendrochronological dating in prehistory.

The subsequent decade should see a conversion in archaeology from an unrefined radiocarbon-based chronology to a complete chronology. It is to be anticipating that the pre-existing unrefined radiocarbon chronology will permit the formulation of the problem to which answers are required in particulars. Dendrochronology and high-precision dating can then be heading towards providing reaction.

Recommendation

One essential goal of dendrochronological research in the next consecutive years is to have a better understanding of the method behind dendrochronology. The outcome of such research should be a necessary part of and must control, the entire approach to optimizing dendrochronological dating for archaeology. Lastly, it is essential to decide one exact purpose for the next succeeding year. This should be the conclusion of one main English oak chronology way back into prehistory.

Future Prospects

There is sustained reason, though, to be positive about the future forecasts in dendrochronology and its developing applications. As the long tree-ring chronologies are unlimited and their associations to one another are more obviously understand, as geographical breaks are overflowing in to generate a web of absolutely-dated and interlinked chronologies worldwide, and as a new technique of their explanation is developed, projection on a hemispheric level should be possible. The result that tree-ring dating should have on archaeology in the subsequent generation and the modification in archaeological philosophy that will in this manner be obligatory is certainly going to be ground-breaking.

Summary

The prospect of dendrochronology with value to the field of archaeology is required to deal with numerous subject matter including legacies from the history involving the curation of data and physical specimens. Realistic consideration engages the optimization of chronological exposure in both geographical and sequential magnitude to make the most of future archaeological dating possible. One principal deliberation is the incorporation of tree-ring resulting information, both chronological and environmental, among other well-dated information from other substitutes is to provide archaeologists with the finest possible background image for their studies. The subsequent responsibility of archaeologists is to focus on resources on sites that can be well-dated so that information on human behavior can be incorporated with the environmental account underpinned by dendrochronology.

The effort needs to be valid to growing chronology exposure and improving dimensions of the relationship between tree-ring outlines. Development in these areas, together with an enhanced understanding of the character of the ‘signal’ which manipulates cross-matching, may considerably develop the Dendrochronologists’ capability to source individual timbers.

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