Dendroarchaeology of Eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) in the Greater Montreal area: local use and imports

Summary

The Groupe de Recherche en Dendrochronologie Historique (GRDH) has carried out various tree-ring analysis of Eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) in the St. Lawrence Valley since its creation in 2002. Its first major project was the creation of a reference chronology for the Québec City area in 2007. Since then, around twenty heritage buildings and archaeological sites of the greater Montreal area have been analysed, totalising one hundred of locally felled eastern white cedar covering the interval 1487-1903. This chronology is compared with the Ottawa and Upper St. Lawrence valleys chronologies for the period 1620-1850 in order to understand growth patterns at the regional scale. This comparative study helps in solving provenancing issues concerning 19th Century imported timbers found in Montreal.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Dendrochronology: Social and Cultural Aspects of Wood in Archaeology

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-50,01