Global scientists are now using tree rings to trace boom and bust cycles across the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods, using a special type of carbon dating to reveal the age and quality of more than 54,000 individual pieces of timber used in pre-modern buildings across Europe.
Wood Central understands that carbon dating —also used to trace the origins of hundreds of the world’s most famous Renaissance-era paintings —could be expanded to understand past forest management and resource utilisation and, in the future, to better understand archeological material from prehistoric times, long before written sources.
Published in Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution, Dr Fredrik Ljungvist, Associate Professor in History and Physical Geography at Stockholm University, led a crack team of researchers who georeferenced oak, fire, pine, larch, and spruce used to construct buildings in the British Isles, the Nordic countries, France, the Benelux countries, and in northern and southern parts of Central Europe between 1250 and 1699.
Overall, the researchers found a low degree of synchronicity in building activity across regions, except for a strong association between southern and northern parts of Central Europe and a close correlation between the British Isles and a small area in southern central Europe.
“The ability to reconstruct changes in building activity in time and space, independent of written sources, provides valuable new insights into times of crisis and prosperity,” said Dr Ljungvist, who only used wood for which the outermost (youngest) tree rings were well preserved, thus allowing for a precise year of felling. “Here we show that felling dates are a good indicator for wellbeing and demographics.”
Dr Ljungvist said the research shows clear evidence of slowing building activity during the so-called ‘Late Medieval Crisis,’ the devasting Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), and in periods of economic boom—where construction activity increased—during the late 13th century and around 1500.
“They (also) show that building activity tracks the historical price of grain, a stable whose price had a major impact on the economy and standards of living,” with “periods of intense building also coinciding with known peaks in lead pollution in ice-cores, a proxy for mining activity.”
On the Thirty Years’ War, Dr Ljungvist said reconstructed building activity captured key demographic changes: “Building activity showed an unprecedented decrease in much of Europe,” with “differences in the magnitude of the decrease agree remarkably well with the known magnitude of the population decrease due to war in different regions of Germany.”
For more information: Front. Ecol. Evol., 26 January 2022, Sec. Paleoecology, Volume 9 – 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.825751
