Justine Bayley wrote:
> It is usually reckoned in Britain that you need 60 rings to be sure of a dendro match with oak; presumably there is more variability than you find in your local timber. Species other than oak cannot be matched to an oak master curve and there are no long chronologies for other species, though I believe some work has been done on late medieval and later pine.
Thanks for this information. I guess that what determines the number of
rings needed is climatic variability; Arizona has extremely variable
winter rainfall, and hence fewer rings are needed than in Britain. I
have also had a response from Peter Kuniholm, who reports that in
Anatolia and the Aegean he would need 100-120 rings to be sure of a
date.
>
> It is usually thought that charcoal for processes that used considerable amounts, such as smelting, was made largely from coppiced wood which is normally cut on a 15-25 year cycle. It is therefore not surprising that dendro dates are not normally available to directly date phases of industrial production.
>
When does the use of coppiced woodland for charcoal production begin?
>From Hyde and other older references I had gained the impression that
coppicing was a medieval technology. Is there evidence of its use in
earlier times?
Dave
|