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

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 Europec. 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.</jats:p

Discovering the Unknown History of the Utilization of Pinus heldreichii in Wooden Structures by Means of Dendroarchaeology: A Case Study from Metsovo (Northern Greece)

(1) Background: Pinus heldreichii is a long-living tree subalpine species commonly used for climate reconstruction. Nevertheless, its potential for dendroarchaeology and dating of historical timber remains unknown. In Metsovo and in the surrounding area of Pindus National Park (Northern Greece) it is commonly used for the construction of buildings and wooden objects and artifacts. (2) Methods: We examined timber found in historical buildings within the study area and we tried to date it using local reference chronologies of Bosnian and Black pines. (3) Results: Bosnian pine chronologies can be used to date timber from historical buildings, while they can also be used as reference chronologies against Black pines, giving very high cross-dating values. Therefore, and since the macroscopic identification of the two species’ timber is impossible, the analysis of wood anatomy is necessary to distinguish the two species in the case of historical wood. (4) Conclusions: The current paper presents the first application of dendroarchaeology for Bosnian pine and highlights the potential of the species in studying cultural heritage and the human past. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Interpreting the Story Old Timber Can Tell: An Example from a ‘Venetian’ Building in Nafplio

The current study is a dendroarchaeological/dendroarchitectural investigation of the remains of a historically important multi-phase building, nicknamed ‘Enetiko’, located in Nafplio. Timber was used for the floors, the roof, and timber-framed walls of the building. Timber elements were also embedded in masonry. Particularly important are the architraves; ground storey timber lintels on the southern façade. According to prior research, the earliest phase was thought to date to the early 18th century with a later 19th century modification. Therefore, we applied dendrochronology to check whether it represents an early construction phase of the building and to confirm the previously mentioned different phases. Timber examination revealed six tree species and 60% of the 85 samples collected in total were dated. Imported deciduous oaks (Quercus spp.), dated c.1530 or after, represent an early Venetian or Ottoman phase of the building. Turkish origin of oaks suggests Ottoman period. Imported fir, most likely Abies alba, was dated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Black pine (Pinus nigra) from Greece and juniper (Juniperus sp.) from the East were used in interventions of the late 19th and 20th centuries. © 2021 Taylor &amp; Francis

The European Russia Drought Atlas (1400–2016 CE)

© 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. 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