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Agriculture has been the major driver of deforestation in Europe in the last 1000 years. In the past, forests were also exploited for charcoal production; however, the spatial scale/extent of this activity and its impact are unknown. LIDAR data can be used as a noninvasive tool to investigate the small-scale diversity of the land relief, including forested areas. These data can reveal the extent anthropogenic modifications of topography present-day as well as in the past. One of the activities that can be analyzed based on LIDAR data is spatial distribution of charcoal production. A preliminary LIDAR data analysis indicated the intensity of this practice and its potential impact on the natural environment. This prompted us to analyze the environmental impact of charcoal hearths in northern Poland. As it turned out, this topic exceeded the scope of earth sciences and became a transdisciplinary one. In this work, we will use the research methods typical of biogeography, dendroecology, paleoecology, soil science, biology, botany, history, onomastics, as well as art history, in order to thoroughly understand not only the natural consequences but also the social and economic consequences of charcoal production. This paper presents the assumptions of our project, the research methodology, and the preliminary results. We have identified using LIDAR data more than 73 thousand relief forms which can be remnants of charcoal hearths. Our preliminary results confirmed large scale impact of past human activity related to charcoal production and suitability of the methods used for detecting and reconstructing charcoal hearths as well as determining the distribution and magnitude of past forest use for charcoal production in NW Poland.

Key message Long Bosnian pine chronologies from different mountains are shaped by different climatic parameters and can help identify past drought events and reconstruct landscape histories. We developed a 735-year-long Pinus heldreichii chronology from the southern distribution limit of the species, expanding the available database of long Bosnian pine chronologies. Tree-ring growth was mainly positively correlated with growing degree days (GDD: r(1950-2018) = 0.476) while higher temperatures during both winter and growing season also enhanced growth (T-WT: r(1950-2018) = 0.361 and T-GS: 0.289, respectively). Annual precipitation, during both calendar and water years, had a negative but weaker impact on annual tree growth. The newly developed chronology correlates well with chronologies developed from the neighboring mountains. The years with ring width index (RWI) lower than the average were found to correspond to cool years with dry summers. Still, the newly developed chronology was able to capture severe drought events, such as those in 1660, 1687, and 1725. Several old living trees had internal scars presumably caused by fires. Therefore, old mature trees could be used for fire history reconstruction in addition to climate reconstruction. Although the presence of lightning scars indicates an important natural agent of fire ignition, human activities associated with animal grazing could also be an underlying reason for fires in the region., National Science Center

We present the European Russia Drought Atlas (ERDA) that covers the East European Plain to the Ural Mountains from 1400–2016 CE. Like the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) for the Euro-Mediterranean region, the ERDA is a one-half degree gridded reconstruction of summer Palmer Drought Severity Indices estimated from a network of annual tree-ring chronologies. Ensemble point-by-point regression is used to generate the ERDA with the identical protocols used for developing the OWDA. Split calibration/validation tests of the ERDA indicate that it has significant skill over most of its domain and is much more skillful than the OWDA where they overlap in the western part of ERDA domain. Comparisons to historical droughts over European Russia additionally support the ERDA’s overall validity. The ERDA has been spatially smoothed and infilled using a local regression method to yield a spatially complete drought atlas back to 1400 CE. EOF analysis indicates that there are three principal modes of hydroclimatic variability in the ERDA. After Varimax rotation, these modes correlate significantly with independent climate data sets extending back to the late nineteenth century in a physically interpretable way and relate to atmospheric circulation dynamics of droughts and heatwaves over European Russia based on more recent instrumental data.

On November 10th 2021, Dieter Eckstein passed away at age 82. Born and raised as a forester's child, his entire life was connected to trees and wood. He grew up to become a dedicated scientist and teacher. His legacy includes both his own considerable research accomplishments as well as his founding of a growing network of tree biologists and wood scientists. From his doctoral degree onwards, the concepts and applications of dendrochronology were his passion, motivated by great curiosity in environmental influences on tree growth. He proved that dendroarchaeology can be accurate and precise, even for timber grown in the mild European maritime climate. He pioneered both techniques and concepts of xylogenesis and quantitative wood anatomy and advanced the potential for tropical dendrochronology. In all of these accomplishments, Dieter collaborated with students and colleagues from all over the world. His Dendrochronological Laboratory at the University of Hamburg hosted both young and experienced scientists from many countries. The European Working Group on Dendrochronology, which he founded in the early 1990s, was his natural habitat and playground to invent and present new research activities. We and the entire dendrochronology community have lost an inspiring colleague and visionary.

In the Mediterranean region, stone and clay have long been the basic materials for buildings, crafts, and manufacturing. Wood plays a secondary, frequently hidden, role but is almost always present...

Artykuł prezentuje serię datowań radiowęglowych ze stanowiska Złota-Gajowizna. Są to pierwsze dane chronometryczne dla najważniejszej nekropolii grupy centralnej kultury amfor kulistych. Dzięki specyfice odkrytych na stanowisku konstrukcji możliwe było skorygowanie datowania radiowęglowego za pomocą dendrochronologii. Zaproponowana został również nowa interpretacja organizacji przestrzennej cmentarzyska, która stała się punktem wyjścia do rozważań nad rytuałem pogrzebowym kultury amfor kulistych z Wyżyny Sandomierskiej. The paper presents a new series of absolute age determinations from the Złota-Gajowizna site. Those are the first chronometric data from the most important necropolis of the central group of the Globular Amphora culture. The obtained denrochronological data, which are unique for the sites of the Late Neolithic in Poland, made it possible to specify the results of the calibration. A new interpretation of the arrangement of the cemetery has been proposed, which is the starting point for determining the GAC funeral rite in the Sandomierz Upland.

The area of the Upper Dniester Basin in Western Ukraine comprises one of the largest concentrations of barrows with the exception of the steppe zone. This article concerns the absolute chronology of one mound group in Bukivna, built in the Middle Bronze Age by the people of the Komarow culture. It also focuses on reconstructing the spatial arrangement of barrows and explaining the creation of their specific linear alignment. A Bayesian statistical analysis of radiocarbon AMS dates collected from five excavated tumuli revealed the chronological and spatial organization of the Bukivna barrows. Moreover, a seriation and correspondence analysis was performed on pottery from the barrows to expose the chronology of specific ornamentation groups. This research allowed for the scenario of the emergence of mounds in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC to be reconstructed. In light of the presented data, it is theorized that barrows were arranged in linear alignments along selected hill zones, although they did not necessarily proceed in a continuous or defined direction. Structuring of the funerary space resulted from the extension of mound groups, which probably represent family sub-necropolises. Linear arrangements of mounds were derived by merging the particular groups; barrows were erected in areas apart from the ‘planned’ structure, usually during different periods (but sometimes simultaneously). It was only after some time that the final alignment formation was accomplished, thus ending the process of structuring particular fragments of the barrow landscape.

Summary This article discusses a fragment of a rare, wooden slab-style Egyptian senet board that was given to the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona) in 1922 by Lily S. Place, an American who lived in Cairo in the 1910s and 1920s and purchased ancient Egyptian objects from dealers and in the bazaars; it has no ancient provenience. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, the authors provide a reading and interpretation of the incised hieroglyphs, establish a radiocarbon date for the game board from 980 to 838 B.C.E., identify the wood as Abies (fir), probably Abies cilicica, demonstrate that the board was fashioned from freshly-cut wood, and identify the inlay substance as a green copper-wax pigment.

Although the importance of centuries-long tree ring width oak chronologies in dating wood, eastern European regions are still lacking a reference chronology. To fill this geographical gap, we combined living and historical chronologies from the Moldova region, including part of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Here we present the “Suceava oak chronology” as the first 804 years long chronology continuously covering the 1216–2019 period. Our analyses further revealed the strong teleconnection of the Suceava oak chronology with south European ones. The link between Romania and northern Turkey chronologies is of particular importance in the context of the high abundance of undated subfossil and archaeological/historical oak wood in eastern Europe and intense wood trades with central Europe in XV-XVII centuries. The availability of the Suceava oak chronology will provide a good base for precise dating and climatic reconstructions.

Key messageWe sampled Pinus nigra cones in 29 trees in an age range of 90 to 725 years. The mother tree age did not significantly influence the pinecone or pine seed size, seed germination capacity, or plant size or vigor displayed during the first year of growth in the nursery.ContextPinus nigra Arn. ssp. salzmannii is a long-lived Mediterranean species, with millenary trees residing in an old-growth forest in the Cazorla Mountain Range in SE Spain which is home to the oldest known trees in the Iberian Peninsula.AimsThis study aimed to assess how the mother tree age in Pinus nigra influences seed viability, germination capacity, and the seedling survival and growth during the first year under nursery conditions.MethodsTwenty-nine trees aged 90 to 725 years were selected and 60 cones were harvested per tree to study the cone characteristics (size and weight), seed viability, and germination capacity in relation to the mother tree age. Eighty germinated seeds per tree were transferred to the nursery and seedling survival and growth were measured after the first growing season.ResultsSignificant between-tree differences were detected for cone characteristics (cone and seed weight, number of seeds per cone), as well as for germination capacity. Notably, however, the mother tree age did not significantly influence the aforementioned parameters.ConclusionForest management and regeneration practices of Pinus nigra should take into account that trees of this species up to at least 725 years old produce seeds with a fairly high reproductive capacity.

The remains of a Medieval harbour were discovered in Puck in 1977. Preliminary research was conducted the next year by Wieslaw Stepien. The site consists of a set of timber construction remains, located on the ground and strengthened with fascine, between which fragments of ceramics appear, especially in the area of the base of the pier. There are also a lot of pieces of simply processed trunks and branches stripped of bark nearby. Also, some scattered pieces of oak logs with yoke openings have been found lying distributed between the piles. Some help in attempting to reconstruct their arrangement comes from the mooring piles, which have a characteristic rectangular cross-section, and are still located on the sea bed. Pieces of five wrecks (one log boat, and four made from planks) have been found between the harbour constructions. Looking at the chronological arrangement of the site, created slowly on the basis of results obtained from dendrochronological analysis, and supplemented with radiological research, we can assume that the harbour was in use between the tenth and the 14th centuries. Key words: underwater archaeology, remains of Medieval harbour, sea level change, protection of cultural heritage, south Baltic, Puck Lagoon. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/ab.v23i0.1310

Upper Mustang is a land of extraordinary, precious, tangible and intangible cultural heritage deeply rooted in the Tibetan culture and tradition of Buddhism as well as the Bon religion. The unique architecture provides a great source of timber suitable for dendrochronological research. Century-old fortresses, palaces, Buddhist monasteries and temples, houses and chortens reflect the great importance of wood as a building material (used alongside clay and stone). We present pioneering research on historical wood from Upper Mustang. The objectives of the study were to determine the wood species used in the traditional architecture of the region, to make an attempt to date materials from Upper Mustang using existing tree-ring chronologies developed for neighbouring geographical regions and to determine the need and the chance of creating separate tree-ring chronologies for Upper Mustang. For the presented study we collected 191 samples from the oldest buildings preserved in Upper Mustang. Anatomical studies of samples resulted in the identification of four species of conifer wood: Himalayan pine – Pinus wallichiana A.B. Jacks, Himalayan fir – Abies spectabilis D.Don, Juniperus spp. and Larix spp. The main achievement of our research was the development of an Upper Mustang master chronology covering the period from 1317 to 1943. The chronology is based on data derived from Pinus wallichiana A.B. Jacks.

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is a widely used tree species in European dendroclimatology studies due to its common distribution across much of the continent. Almost all studies find radial growth strongly related to summer temperature, a result reflecting site selection at high elevation/latitude environments where trees grow at their ecophysiological limits. Due to the amount of attention spent on these sites there is a geographical and seasonal bias in temperature reconstructions based upon tree-ring proxies in Europe. To overcome the limited availability of tree-ring data in temperate lowlands, we present a northern Poland ring-width chronology developed from living and historic Scots pine material with a strong common growth signal going back to AD 1200. Investigations into climate-growth relationships found year-to-year ring-width variability to be more strongly correlated to cold season temperature (November to April) prior to the growing season than summer temperatures during tree-ring formation. Based on this relationship it was possible to reconstruct cold season temperature conditions for the last 810 years. Spatial field correlations with gridded instrumental records indicated that the reconstruction provides relevant cold season temperature information across the land regions bordering the North Atlantic Ocean and Baltic Sea, lowlands and uplands of western and central Europe, and the eastern and central interior of Russia. Despite an unsuccessful attempt to find a stationary relationship with the North Atlantic Oscillation, comparisons with several cold season temperature reconstructions confirmed the long-term connection between our reconstructed temperature series for northern Poland and the wider area.

A total of 272 oak (Quercussp.) samples have been collected from large subfossil trees dredged from sediment deposited by the Sava and various tributary rivers in the Zagreb region of northwestern Croatia, and in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Measurement series of tree-ring widths from these samples produced 12 groups, totaling 3456 years of floating tree-ring chronologies spread through the last ca. 8000 years. This work represents the first step in creating a new, high-resolution resource for dating and paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Balkan region and potentially a means to bridge between the floating tree-ring chronologies of the wider Mediterranean region and the continuous long chronologies from central Europe.

Dendrochronological research in North-Central Europe and the East Mediterranean has produced networks of long regional oak (Quercus sp.) reference chronologies that have been instrumental in dating, provenancing, and paleoclimate research applications. However, until now these two important tree-ring networks have not been successfully linked. Oak forests and historical/archaeological sites in southeastern Europe provide the key for linking the North-Central European and East Mediterranean tree-ring networks, but previous dendrochronological research in this region has been largely absent. This article presents the initial results of a project, in which we have built oak tree-ring chronologies from forest sites and historical/archaeological sites along a north-south transect between Poland and northwestern Turkey, with the aim of linking the North-Central European and East Mediterranean tree-ring networks and creating a new pan-European oak data set for dendrochronological dating and paleoclimatic reconstruction. Correlation among tree-ring chronologies and the spatial distribution of their teleconnections are evaluated. The southeastern European chronologies provide a solid bridge between both major European dendrochronological networks. The results indicate that a dense network of chronologies is the key for bridging spatial and temporal gaps in tree-ring records. Dendrochronological sampling should be intensively continued in southeastern Europe because resources for building long oak chronologies in the region are rapidly disappearing.

In 2016, the Directorate of Istanbul Archaeology Museums unearthed an extensive jetty within the eastern portion of the Byzantine harbor excavated at Yenikapi, Istanbul. The purpose of the paper is to present the results obtained from the dating and dendroprovenancing of the wooden timbers from this historical jetty. A total of 145 oak and fir samples were collected for dating. The cutting dates of the oak timbers were determined to be from AD 1762-1763, which has also been confirmed by archaeological documents. The best statistical values (Gleichlaufigkeit value 76%, TVBP 10.0 and CDI 82) were obtained using the oak chronology for Vezneciler from the Asian side of the Bosporus, which represents construction phases dating to AD 1762-1763. The highest statistical matches for the oak tree-ring series from both Yenikapi and Vezneciler were obtained using reference chronologies from northern Greece and Kosovo. Three site chronologies from the forests of Bolu, Karabuk and Kastamonu were used to date the fir samples, and the cutting date was determined to be AD 1906. The best statistical results were obtained from the site chronology for Kastamonu (Gleichlaufigkeit value 72%, TVBP 10.3 and CDI 79). Due to the significant correlation with this site chronology, the origin of the fir samples may be from the forests of Kastamonu, which is the nearest fir forest along the Black Sea. Because roads and railways were not common during this period, the fir timbers may have been transported via the Black Sea to Yenikapi located near the Marmara Coast. We can conclude from this evidence that construction near the Byzantine harbor continued to utilize imported timbers into the Ottoman period.

In southern Spain, the Cazorla Mountains (500–2,100 m a.s.l.) have supplied construction timber from black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) for buildings and ships since at least the Middle Ages. To establish the age and provenance of wooden cultural heritage originating from this area, well-replicated long-span chronologies are needed. Old-living trees occur at high elevations, whereas many historical timbers originated from lower altitudes; hence, crossdating possibilities were questionable. To assess the potential of this species for the development of a multi-millennia tree-ring data set with living trees and historical timbers for the western Mediterranean, we developed four ring-width chronologies along the circa 1,000 m altitudinal range of black pine in these mountains and examined crossdating patterns and climate–growth responses along with altitude and through time. Teleconnections with other Iberian and Mediterranean tree-ring data were also tested. A well-replicated chronology spanning AD 1331–2009 was obtained at the upper site, while lower elevations delivered shorter chronologies. Similarity among chronologies and responses to climate were dependent on elevation. Tree-ring width was negatively related to temperature in previous late summer and positively to February–March, whereas precipitation had an opposite effect; some negative influence of early summer temperature was also observed. However, growth responses were rather unstable throughout the twentieth century. These chronologies showed good tele- and heteroconnections with conifer chronologies from Iberia, northern Morocco and Turkey, evidencing the existence of a common macroclimatic signal, which also varied along with elevation. The relevance of these results for dendrohistorical studies is discussed.

The 1st millennium AD was a time of great transition in Europe and the Mediterranean. At the heart of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) was a pivotal trade hub for the Aegean region. Establishing a precise and accurate dating framework for the development of this remarkable city and a chronological reference for this critical time period for the Mediterranean region is of great importance to a wide range of scholars. Here we present a new 213 year tree-ring record from 89 oak samples placed in time by dendrochronology and supported by radiocarbon analysis and historical documentation. It represents the middle of the first millennium AD in Constantinople. The tree-ring series are derived from pilings recovered from the extraordinary excavations of the so-called “Theodosian harbor” at Yenikapi, Istanbul, along with timbers from other sites and buildings around the city, including one of the most famous sites on the Istanbul sky-line—Hagia Sophia. They provide potential for new insight into a time period in which earthquakes, the Justinianic plague, and even a possible tsunami struck the city, and during which dramatic changes in climate have been recorded in other paleoenvironmental proxies. The chronology is the first published tree-ring series from the Aegean region to cover the ‘event’ years of AD 536–7 and 542 which are characterized by anomalous growth in other tree-ring series from around the world, but interestingly these event years are not evident in this tree-ring sequence.

As part of a larger project promoting the development of historical dendrochronology in the Iberian Peninsula, ship-timbers from the Arade 1 wreck (mostly planking and framing elements), stored at the DANS/IGESPAR in Lisbon, were examined. Of these, 52 samples were identified as deciduous oak (Quercus subg. quercus) and two as chestnut (Castanea sativa). Of 24 timbers selected for dendrochronological research, 23 could be dated, placing the origin of the wood in western France and the felling of trees between AD 1579 and 1583. Their homogeneity suggests they are part of the original construction, which probably took place shortly after AD 1583. © 2012 The Authors

An atlas of megadroughts in Europe and in the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era provides insights into climate variability., Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we have developed the “Old World Drought Atlas” (OWDA), a set of year-to-year maps of tree-ring reconstructed summer wetness and dryness over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era. The OWDA matches historical accounts of severe drought and wetness with a spatial completeness not previously available. In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes. The OWDA provides new data to determine the causes of Old World drought and wetness and attribute past climate variability to forced and/or internal variability.

Old Believers’ service books from the Piirissaar house of prayer in Estonia were rescued from a fire and the damaged oak boards of the wooden covers of one of the books were dendrochronologically dated back to AD 1353. The dendrochronological reference shows that the oak wood originates from East Pomerania-Gdansk region. The intriguing fact is that the book was not printed until 1879 in Moscow. The seemingly contradictory dates and locations can be explained by the adventurous history of the Old Believers sects in Russia. The Old Believers were suppressed during the Russian Orthodox Church reforms between 1652 and 1666 and many of them escaped to remote marginal areas of the empire or emigrated, e.g. to Rzeczpospolita. Due to lively communication between the Old Believers’ congregations, their literature moved from country to country. In this case, a newer book of the Old Believers was bound with old wooden covers from Poland.

This article presents a multidisciplinary case study of The Armorer’s Shop (North Carolina Museum of Art), a seventeenth-century panel painting attributed to David Teniers the Younger of Flanders. The study was motivated, first, by visual and X-ray radiographic observations suggesting an atypical construction, and second, by the discovery that the depiction of armor in this painting is nearly identical to that in several other works. All but one of these paintings are attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger, a contemporary Flemish painter related to Teniers by marriage. Stylistic analysis strongly supports the hypothesis that Brueghel completed the armor, whereas Teniers painted the background, figures and objects depicted around the armor. A broad range of materials analysis techniques, particularly cross-sectional analysis, dendrochronology and confocal X-ray fluorescence microscopy (CXRF), were used to establish whether the panel construction and palette composition are consistent with this hypo...

The cutting dates of 10 wood timbers (girders and corner rafters) of Sinmu-mun, the north gate of Kyungbok Palace in Seoul, were determined by the dendrochronological method. Tree-ring chronologies of unknown dates derived from the timbers were crossdated using the graphic comparison method against the dated master chronologies derived from living trees. The living trees for the masters used for this study were Pinus densiflora Sieb. et Zucc. (Japanese red pine), a major timber species for Korean traditional buildings. By comparing the Sinmu-mun samples with the masters from the western Sorak Mountains in central-eastern Korea, the Sinmu-mun samples yielded the cutting dates A.D. 1868, 1869, and 1870/1871. Surprisingly, these dates are 3 to 6 year later than the known date (A.D. 1865) of the Sinmu-mun reconstruction, which was recorded in a historical document ‘Ilsungrok’, the King’s official diary. Since the time that the Sinmu-mun construction date had been questioned, another record was found in the 1872 April issue of Ilsungrok, indicating the rebuilding of Sinmu-mun in the 1870s. Both pieces of evidence, from tree-ring dates and historic records, prove that the rebuilding of Sinmu-mun started after the Fall of 1870, but not later than April 1872. The results prove that tree-ring dating is a precise dating method and it can be applied to archaeological studies on Korean structures.

We review the current state of dendroarchaeology in the Iberian Peninsula and discuss its potential, outlining the particular relevance and complexity of this territory and its material heritage for dendroarchaeological studies. Whereas dendrochronology is used throughout the rest of Europe to answer questions about cultural heritage, the application of dendroarchaeology in the Iberian Peninsula has been remarkably underrepresented in comparison to dendroecology and dendroclimatology. Existing tree-ring chronologies in this territory have a widespread geographical coverage, but are often too short to allow dendroarchaeological studies, resulting in inadequate assessments of material heritage made of wood in and originating from the Iberian Peninsula. However, different studies have demonstrated that dendroarchaeology has a great potential in the area. This review illustrates the rich variety of Iberian material heritage from different periods and cultures covering over 8000 years that could profit from dendrochronological research. Future research possibilities in relation to the available Iberian heritage in Spain, Portugal and worldwide are proposed. © 2015.

During the Middle Ages northern Belgium and The Netherlands were gradually deforested. A steadily rising demand for quality timber obliged merchants to look for new timber sources. From the 13th century onwards, large volumes of timber were imported from surrounding regions and, despite the remote supply area, merchants of the Hanseatic League managed to organize a huge timber trade from towns around the Baltic Sea. Trees from forests along the Vistula River seem to have been exported via Gdansk, first to Bruges and later to Antwerp. At their final destination the imported wood assortments were highly appreciated for shipbuilding and construction purposes, but also by woodcarvers and famous painters. Over the last decade dendrochronologists have established a dense network of historical site chronologies for northern and central Poland. These site chronologies are supposed to reflect local growth conditions and may allow the identification of the provenance of the wood of many art historical objects made out of Baltic timber. Tree-ring patterns of panel paintings and sculptures, mainly from the 14th–16th centuries, were measured and compared to this data set of site chronologies. An evaluation of the accuracy of sourcing medieval Baltic timbers using standard correlation techniques was made. The identification of provenance enriches historical information on logging activity and timber trade around the Baltic Sea during the Middle Ages. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Summary During the Middle Ages and early modern times timber became one of the most important commercial products. Vast quantities were transported from the ports of the Eastern Baltic Sea to Western Europe and used among other things as the panels for paintings. A growing number of very local master chronologies constructed in Poland for oak (Quercus spp.) increases the possibility to localize its origin. Using methods of so-called dendroprovenancing, timbers from Bialowieza Forest in Eastern Poland, for example, were detected in a Scottish castle. However, the question of Baltic timber in historic objects of Western Europe still remains an exiting challenge.

The 17th c. Flemish painting on panel, The Armorer's Shop, has long been attributed to David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690). The painting depicts an opulent pile of parade armor at the bottom left foreground, a seated armorer at the bottom right foreground, and a forge surrounded by workers in the middle ground. The Teniers attribution is derived from his signature at the bottom right as well as figural groups and other visual elements that are commonly associated with him and executed in his style. During dendrochronological examination of the painting, a portion of the oak plank comprising the overall structure was found to have been carved out so that a smaller plank (containing the parade armor) could be inserted into the resulting depression. This unusual construction, combined with the identification of several paintings by Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678) depicting the same parade armor, raised questions about the attribution and chronology of construction of the painting. Art historical research suggests that the smaller plank with the armor was painted by Brueghel and that the remainder of the panel with the workers and forge was painted by his brother-in-law Teniers. While Brueghel writes of collaborating with Teniers in his journal, this appears to be the only identified collaboration of the two artists. Conventional microanalysis methods did not resolve the painting's construction chronology. However, confocal x-ray fluorescence microscopy (CXRF) revealed the composition and location of buried paint layers at the panel interfaces by combining depth scans at a number of adjacent lateral positions to produce virtual cross-sections over 20 mm in length. The relationship of the paint layers at the panel interfaces provided evidence for the armor panel having been painted separately and prior to the rest of the composition. This data, along with dendrochronological and IRR data, provided a chronology of construction for the painting that provided additional evidence for a Brueghel attribution. An overview of the CXRF technique will be provided along with a discussion of how CXRF data relates to data collected using SEM-EDS, FTIR, Raman, conventional XRF, x-radiography, IRR, and dendrochronology.

Danzig war uber mehrere Jahrhunderte ein zentraler Handels- und Umschlagplatz fur Holz und Holzprodukte, die uber das Flussystem der Weichsel herangeflost und uber die Ost- und Nordsee nach Westeuropa verschifft wurden. Die Herkunfte des Holzes sowie Lieferumfang und Bestimmungsort wechselten im Laufe der Zeit aufgrund der veranderlichen politischen Situationen in Westeuropa und im Ostsseeraum

In the current study we use methods in dendrochronological dating, radiocarbon dating and wiggle-matching analysis to accurately date charcoal samples collected from the archaeological site of Uşaklı Höyük, Yozgat, Turkey. These data contribute to the understanding of the stratigraphical relationships in three different contexts of this multi-period mound. The examined charcoal materials were identified as cedar (Cedrus sp.) and oak (Quercus sp.). The analysis of the cedar samples resulted in establishing a floating chronology with a length of 49 rings. Further analysis of the material revealed that secure dendrochronological dating against the existing reference chronologies cannot be achieved for any of the Uşaklı Höyük samples selected for dendrochronology. This is due to the insufficient length of the developed mean chronology (49 rings), the shortness of single tree-ring sequences (max. 34 rings for cedar and 23 for oak) and the scarcity of reference chronologies that can be used for cross-dating. Therefore, we use radiocarbon tests and wiggle-matching analysis as the main dating method. Radiocarbon testing and further analysis of absolute dating of the charcoal pieces point to three different archaeological periods: the wooden post found in Room 433 of Building III is dated to the range of 1415 – 1363 BCE (2?), confirming the assumption that it was an architectural element of the original construction of this Late Bronze Age/Hittite building. Radiocarbon dating results of charcoal pieces from the filling of Pit 330, 1008 – 905 BCE (2?), can only be used tentatively and require cross-checking against additional samples and other organic material from the same context. The results of radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples associated with the Iron Age stone glacis built on top of Building III (763 – 486 BCE, 2?) confirm that they are associated with the Iron Age occupation at Uşaklı Höyük., Poland National Science Center; The Balkan-Aegean Dendrochronology Project

The authors elaborate on a recent paper by Baillie et al. (See AATA 22-1966 for abstract of article) which resolved a number of problems in art-historical dendrochronology. They remark that analysis of oak panels used by Rembrandt, Rubens, and other painters between the 14th and the middle of the 17th centuries revealed a new tree ring pattern not cross-matching with any of the existing oak chronologies. They undertook a study of building timbers from churches and other historical buildings and excavated artifacts in North Poland around Gdansk and were able to confirm one of the two tree ring chronologies existing for the Netherlands. The statistical data of concordance are detailed. A table summarizes the dating of 10 Rembrandt paintings. Dating of other identified art objects are presented as unaffected by these findings.