Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TIMBER (Northern Europe\'s timber resource - chronology, origin and exploitation)

Teaser

In the project ‘Northern Europe’s timber resource - chronology, origin and exploitation’ (TIMBER) we are examining the history of one of the most important resources that past people have relied upon – timber. Timber and wood has always been an essential material for...

Summary

In the project ‘Northern Europe’s timber resource - chronology, origin and exploitation’ (TIMBER) we are examining the history of one of the most important resources that past people have relied upon – timber. Timber and wood has always been an essential material for people. It is a fuel, and an invaluable building material – for shelter, utensils, furniture and art; for transport, storage, defence, even monuments. Studying the timber humans have left behind is allowing us to determine the precise chronology of material remains, and examine the usage, availability, exploitation and trade of this bulk commodity.
We are studying the changes in the way people in Northern Europe attained and used timber taking a long timeframe of six centuries from AD 1100 to 1700. The reason for this is that we can already see that trade of timber takes off from c. 1400 onwards, so by taking this long timeframe we can examine the changes that occur in different regions with time. Some regions begin to experience a shortage in the timber supply. Sometimes this is seen in a change in the way buildings are constructed, but increasingly, over time, we see that regions import their timber from regions with surplus.
We aim to discover exactly where the timber came from, the proportion of local to imported timber and the reason for timber import. Is shortage of large long-lived trees the only driving factor that causes the import of the resource? Can different prices of timber from differing economies also play a role? What problems of logistics influence the feasibility of transporting this very bulky product?
The overall objective is to examine the reason for the expansion of timber trade through time. We are doing this by analysing, in detail, several case studies.
Objectives
1. Reconstruct a history of timber with reference to chronology, region and source of supply.
2. Reconstruct the state of timber in Northern Europe, spatially and temporally, from c. 1100 to 1700 AD, using extensive tree-ring data. This would involved combining the details of the provenance of traded timber with written records of timber trade to increase our knowledge of the link between timber supply, regional traditions and the spread of materials and ideas.
3. Build oak chronologies for the eastern Baltic region, to allow the provenance of an enormous number of painted oak panels and other objects whose origin is known only as “Baltic” to be precisely determined.
4. Carry out detailed analysis of specific case studies – the Bøle ship from Norway and other ships of Baltic timber and the Vasa ship in Stockholm. These each represent different cultural histories, regions and date, and have a particular relevance to questions of timber trade.
5. Carry out strontium analysis of oak in the archaeological record to examine whether this method can identify the region of origin of this extensive material.
6. Carry out aDNA analysis of oak, to investigate whether it can be used as an indicator of provenance.
The central questions to be addressed are in two categories: timber and science and timber and our human past.
Timber and science
The methods that we are using to analyse timber remains in the archaeological record are many and varied, and each presents certain challenges. Can isotope analysis be used to identify the origin of timber for which tree-ring data is lacking? Can aDNA analysis of historic timber be used as indicators of timber origin? Can a combination of provenance determination techniques (dendrochronology, isotopes and aDNA) strengthen the precision to which the source of timber is identified? Can recent developments in non-destructive analysis methods be developed further, to allow non-invasive methods to be applied to analysis, in a wider range of conditions or situations?
Timber and our human past
Using the sciences that shed light on date and source of timber remains we can then ask questions of the material, pertaining to past people’s use o

Work performed

During the project so far, the research has taken a number of diverse directions, both in the science-based analyses and in the study of specific archaeological case studies and written sources. One of the main case studies has been analysis of the timber used to build Vasa, a Swedish warship, built in Stockholm in 1628. She sank on her first voyage in Stockholm Harbour. Vasa is housed at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. Purchase records from the time tell us that timber was bought in eastern Swedish estates, particularly inland from Stockholm from estates around Lake Mälaren, and from territories along the coast southwards from the city. But timber was also purchased from Riga and Königsberg (modern day Kaliningrad) and from Amsterdam. The study of the timber in the ship is revealing which timbers come from these diverse sources, and where in the ship it was used. We are using dendrochronology to identify the timber origin (dendroprovenance) and experimenting with using stable isotopes preserved in the wood, also to identify the origin of the timber. These analyses are confirming that there are indeed timber from at least four distinct sources in the ship including a Baltic source and a west Swedish source. It is showing us that even in a highly forested region like Sweden, still timber was imported from abroad. Clearly shortage was not an issue here. So we are working on analysing why this might be. This case study is quite unique in that we have highly detailed written sources and now highly detailed scientific analyses to directly compare the information in both. The recent evaluation of historical records in the archives is associating higher prices for timber with higher administrative- and transport-costs and therefore point towards economic and political reasons for this development.
We have also analysed in detail timber from the Bøle Ship. This is a wreck found in the river Skienselva near Bøle in southern Norway and is dendrochronologically dated to 1380s. It is housed at the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo. This ship sank with a cargo of whetstones. This commodity comes from further up the fjord at Eidsborg, and the ship was probably on its way out of the fjord with the cargo when it sank. We have studied this ship to examine whether it represents trade in timber for shipbuilding in the late 14th century. Every timber analysed is from the southern Baltic region, more specifically, from around the mouth of the Vistula River, that meets the Baltic Sea at Gdansk. Even the keel, which might be taken as the foundation timber for the ship, has a southern Baltic source. Rather than evidence for transport of timber, we should consider that this ship was built at the mouth of the Vistula, exploiting the abundant timber available in that region at this time.
As a contrast to this study, we have examined another ship from the same decade as Bøle. The Bremen Ship is from 1378 and was found in the river Weser just outside Bremen during river dredging. Archaeological observations suggest that the ship never sailed, and it was thus probably built near to where it was found. It is housed at the Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum in Bremerhaven. Extensive dendrochronology of this wreck demonstrate that the ship was made of oak from around Bremen. We have been examining the timber of the Bremen ship to categorize the quality of the wood used. The hull is built with planks that were cut from trees with low branches, which indicate trees that grew without competition from neighbouring trees. It seems that the hinterland of Bremen had, by the late 14th century, become a quite open landscape. Why did the ship builders use this difficult material to build their ship? Did they lack the finances or the trade networks to try to attain more suitable material? We are working on examining these questions. Further the Bremen ship is a valuable contrasting example for the analyses of ships like the Bøle wreck.
The question of wood, particularly

Final results

The TIMBER project has been breaking boundaries of science on many levels. As the project title suggests we have been examining the chronology, origin and exploitation of timber across Northern Europe. To address questions of the chronology of timber usage the tree-ring analysis is the key anchor for our case studies, particularly when we can examine structures in a holistic way. But combining this precision with the level of detail that we can achieve examining written records we are looking at how the material evidence agrees or conflicts with the written. For example, records of sawmills along the Vistula River show that this technology was already in Prussia in the 14th century. However we have many examples of oak boards or planks that come from this region, precisely dated, which demonstrates that the technique of splitting the logs into planks, boards etc. was also still practiced.
In terms of the timber origin, again the tree-ring studies allow us to identify where the historic timber originally grew in most cases. But because of gaps in this knowledge, either due to a gap in reference datasets for some regions or when material is not dating dendrochronologically, we are examining how we can use the isotopes captured in the wood remains and the DNA in the timber. We are developing techniques for isolating the original isotopes of strontium in the wood and for the extraction of the fragile DNA, so that these techniques can provide us with a completely new level of detail, in our quest to describe the timber resource in the past.
To examine past peoples’ exploitation of this resource we are attempting to evaluate the properties and quality of the timber that people used in the past. We can see that some regions suffered a shortage of timber for building, but this seems not to have automatically prompted import of timber from abroad. Some past structures were made from timber that to our eye looks to be of bad quality. We are working on quantifying this phenomenon, to examine where and when usage of the local timber sources were preferred. We are also examining regions that had surplus of timber during the study period. Why do we see that timber imported to consumers in the Netherlands, Denmark, etc., come from different sources at different times? We also see that regions with surplus timber also imported timber. So the market for this product is not only to fill a shortage.
With these details, we will be able to examine the patterns and the changes in the exploitation of the timber resource through the six centuries under study. We expect to have refined and developed the techniques that we use to interrogate timber remains from historic buildings and archaeological sites, and we will describe the changes through time of the trade in timber products (planks boards staves etc.) and bulk timber (masts, beams, logs etc.). We will examine the areas with surplus to analyse how people managed, harvested and transported the goods to the coastal markets for shipping. And we will examine the regions where this timber was received.

Website & more info

More info: http://timber.ku.dk.