Dendrochronology: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wood in Archaeology

At its most basic level, dendrochronology allows for the dating of structures and their construction phases. However, during the past 30 years it has rapidly expanded to include a wide variety of behavioral and cultural events and processes. Its growing appeal and utility has transformed the shrinking corpus of historic buildings into a documentable cultural resource. As an approach in archaeology, dendrochronology has carved out a scholarly niche that intersects with the study of shipwrecks, heritage buildings, environmental archaeology, wood as a material relevant to the human past, and dendroprovenancing, which enables the study of wood as a historical material in both time and space. This session is devoted to exploring the social and cultural relations of wood (terrestrial and maritime) to which dendrochronology provides access.