New tools for timber provenancing

Summary

Wood has been intensively used as a basic raw material from prehistory to the present. It was used for tools production and also for construction and shipbuilding. Two fundamental questions asked from an archaeological timber are, what time do they date to, and where do they come from? The age of wooden objects can be determined by means of dendrochronology, which is basically a scientific discipline that studies tree-rings in wood. But there are many more features and characteristics in the wood what can be studied. In my research I investigated if using additional wood variables can be used for identification of timber origin. Pines and oaks were the centre of the study as in the past these two genera were extensively used and planted for use in all kinds of constructions. I conclude that provenancing of timber is complex and largely depends on the available reference datasets, but has great potential when different methods and variables are combined.