Talkshow
Science Cafe Wageningen: Exploring and discussing science with professionals, funky music and a drink
In this Science Café dr. Marta Domínguez-Delmás and PhD-candidate Francien Bossema will present how they study tree rings in historic wood to date it and infer its provenance.
What is a Science Café?
Well, it’s definitely not an obligatory monologue in a bulb-lighted college room. Rather it’s an informal meeting between scientists and those who love science, or who love to debate the impact of science on our society. So: in a cafe, with live music, and with a moderator for a lively debate. And if you are not inspired, you can leave whenever you want.
Each meeting is organized around an interesting topic of conversation. After some live music, two scientists give a brief presentation and sometimes show a short video clip to kick off a spicy debate.
Visit the Science Cafe: get a beer, listen, make some remarks and enlighten your mind.
16 maart: WOODprints, secrets in historic wood
Historic wood holds secret information hidden in the tree-ring signatures. These very old secrets are now being revealed thanks to novel technologies that do not damage the wood. The uncovering of the tree-ring patterns in historical wooden objects enables accurate inferences about timber provenance, and about the performance of past forests and forestry practices. These insights stimulate the appreciation of our forests and our cultural heritage made of wood. Historical tree-ring records bring fascinating stories to the surface!
In this Science Café dr. Marta Domínguez-Delmás and PhD-candidate Francien Bossema will present how they study tree rings in historic wood to date it and infer its provenance (dendroarchaeology). Marta Domínguez-Delmás will focus on the information that can be retrieved from the wood of sculptures, historic buildings and shipwrecks such as Batavia, with respect to the attribution of works of art, the historical timber trade and ancestral forestry practices. Francien Bossema will discuss the state-of-the-art in X-ray CT to retrieve tree-ring patterns from historical art objects and the implementation of this technology to study the manufacturing process and state of conservation of art works of diverse materials.
Marta Domínguez-Delmás
Marta Domínguez-Delmás is a VENI-Fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Member of ICOMOS International Wood Committee, she is a dendrochronologist with a multidisciplinary background in Forestry Engineering and Cultural Heritage. Her track record researching (pre)historical wood from archaeological sites, historic buildings, shipwrecks, and art objects focusses on how humans have used, worked, managed, and traded timber resources since ancient times. The development of tree-ring based evidence to support the attribution of works of art to artists and workshops, and the implementation of CT for non-invasive dendrochronology are also at the core of her VENI project ‘Wood for Goods’.
Francien Bossema
Francien Bossema is a PhD student at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, in the Impact4Art project. During her MSc she studied Mathematics and Science Communication & Society at Leiden University. Her current research focusses on the developing algorithms tailored to the application of CT scanning to cultural heritage objects. Artworks are crafted with a focus on an aesthetically pleasing exterior. Using CT, the interior of an artwork can be investigated, uncovering the secrets hidden within.