C. Mills

Reconstructing Holocene climate from tree rings: The potential for a long chronology from the Scottish Highlands

Despite promising research in the 1980s showing the potential of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) for the reconstruction of past summer temperatures in the Scottish Highlands, little dendroclimatic work has been attempted in this region since. This reflects, in part, the limited number of sparsely distributed remnant natural/semi-natural pine woodlands in the Scottish Highlands and the lack of old growth forest therein. On average, most of the pine trees dated in this region are around 225 years in age. Here, we present the first results of an ongoing interdisciplinary initiative to develop a long Scottish chronology through the acquisition of modern, historical and subfossil pine material from the native pinewoods, historic structures and lakes of the Scottish Highlands. Radiocarbon dating of 25 subfossil pine timbers recovered from lake sediments identified the presence of preserved material covering the last 8000 years with initial clusters focused on the last two millennia and early–mid Holocene. Although developing a well-replicated 8000 year pine chronology will take many years, this preliminary study indicates that a millennial length pine chronology from the northwest Cairngorm region is a feasible and realistic objective in the near future. The importance of such a record in this climatically important sector of northwest Europe cannot be underestimated.

Seeing the wood and the trees: dendrochronological studies in Scotland

Introduction The value of dendrochronology as a precise dating tool is well established (Ashmore, this volume) and this paper concentrates on other aspects of its value to Scottish archaeology and history. Timber in Scotland has been a resource under pressure for a long time, and consequently the history of timber trade and woodland exploitation is particularly interesting. Scotland now has very restricted semi-natural woodland, representing about 1% of land cover. While the extent of semi-natural woodland has undoubtedly shrunk in recent centuries, pollen evidence indicates that much of Scotland has been characterized by open landscapes since later prehistory (Tipping 1994).

Dendrochronologically Dated Buildings from Scotland

Les AA. proposent une liste de tous les bâtiments dates par dendrochronologie en Ecosse, incluant ceux deja mentionnes dans des publications anterieures. Ils donnent ensuite une breve description des bâtiments dont ils ont eux-memes realise la datation.

Dendrochronologically Dated Pine Buildings from Scotland: The SCOT2K Native Pine Dendrochronology Project

The SCOT2K project has extended native pine tree-ring chronology coverage for Scotland to enable reconstruction of past climate and for cultural heritage dating benefits. Using living trees from multiple locations in the Highlands and sub-fossil material from lochs, a network of five regional chronologies has been produced. The project has developed the application of Blue Intensity (BI), a proxy measure for maximum latewood density, which is faster and less costly to obtain than traditional densitometry measurements. The use of both ring-width and BI has been demonstrated to greatly assist historical dendro-dating of pine. This paper presents the dating results for the twenty Scottish pine buildings or sites dendro-dated through the SCOT2K project. They range from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and from high-status castles to modest cruck cottages. They are mostly located in the Highlands where Scots pine occurs naturally, although an early example of long-distance transport is also identified.