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Longstanding demographic growth accompanied by rising settlement activities and development of industry led to an increasing demand on utilization of wood. Tree species were selected for their specific properties. As a consequence of regional differences of forest species composition, wood has become an extremely important trade commodity. Therefore, the utilization of individual species could substantially change in space and time. In this study, we use 8´135 precisely dated timber constructions from a dendrochronological database to investigate spatio-temporal changes in wood utilization across the Czech lands from the 15th to the 19th century. Our results suggest that the utilization of individual species in historical timber constructions was primarily limited by their availability. Species selection was also based on wood properties and stem geometry. Most of historical constructions (99.7%), represented mainly by roofs and ceilings, are made of fir, spruce, pine, and oak. While fir constructions prevail in eastern Moravia and Silesia, spruce constructions are largely spread across the western and central part of the Czech Republic. Pine and oak constructions reflect natural occurrence of such forests in lower elevated central Bohemia and southern Moravia. Although fir prevailed in timber construction in the late-Medieval and post-Medieval times, planting of spruce monocultures resulted in its significantly increased utilization by the end of the 19th century. This study demonstrates the value of dendrochronological databases as an indicator of historical wood utilization.

Transcarpathian wooden churches started to dilapidate after World War I. To preserve the architectural heritage, five oak churches were transported from the region to the territory of today's Czech Republic. However, an exact date of their construction and origin of wood have not been specified and evidenced in literature. In this study, 63 samples have been collected and processed using standard dendrochronological methods. Three Baroque churches, coming from the Mukachevo district, were absolutely dated thanks to the preserved waney edge or sapwood tree rings to periods 1734–1744, 1753–1755, and 1783–1795. Two other churches, representing Gothic architecture, were transported from a more eastern part of Transcarpathian Ukraine. One of them was dated to the period after 1655 and the other could not be reliably dated using available reference chronologies. The created mean tree-ring width series representing individual churches showed strong correlations with the reference chronologies for Slovakia and northern Romania whereas correlations with the only Ukrainian chronology (Lviv region) were negligible. This could suggest low Transcarpathian tree-ring coherency and may indicate the need to create a dense network of regional tree-ring width chronologies in the regions surrounding the Carpathian Mountains.