14th-15th May 2011 - Dendrochronology Part III

Dendro.....what? Lets face it, it's not a word in most peoples everyday vocabulary but it was one of the Part III courses being run this year so I thought, lets give it a try....

Looking into the subject matter further it still sounds a little unusual. The dating of artifacts by counting the number of tree rings on particular types of wood and matching the patterns with some painstakingly constructed databases.

How could we possibly take a weekend to learn about this? But I have to say this was probably the best of all the great courses I've done so far under the scholarship.

Located in Plymouth - it was back to the scene of my first course and again with Peter Holt hosting but with Nigel Nayling of the University of Wales taking on the role of tutor for the weekend.

We opened up with lecture on the underlying principles - as a concept it's easy enough but the details are what matter - the type of wood, the number of samples even the number of rings on the wood; all are vital if you want to get a good date match.

Then it was off to Hooe Lake to try it out in practice. This nice little intertidal site gave us a great opportunity to see how it would work in practice to identify, select and sample our site. It was also as a chance for Peter to dredge up his maritime law knowledge when the local neighbourhood watch came calling!

Following this it was back to the classroom to see about the applications for Dendrochronology specifically in nautical archaeology and a look at its limitations.

Sunday was looking at some of Nigel's many case studies and a chance for us to see how it was done. Although computers are used nowadays we got a chance to try out the paper based methodologies to make sure we really understood the principles underlying the discipline. After some careful measuring, recording and chart plotting we came up with a very good match - all based on a real life example.

Then Nigel got out his samples - everything from an 8,000 year old timber sample to sections of a rib from the Normans Bay wrecks to core samples from iron age boats it was a great chance to see what worked and what didn't as well as an example on how to organise, pack, transport and label samples.

Overall a great weekend where I learnt far more than I could ever have imagined helped along by a amazingly knowledgeable and enthusiastic tutor.