Dendrochronologically dated pine buildings from Scotland: the SCOT2K native pine dendrochronology project

CM Mills, A Crone, C Wood, R Wilson�- Vernacular Architecture, 2017 - Taylor & Francis
CM Mills, A Crone, C Wood, R Wilson
Vernacular Architecture, 2017Taylor & Francis
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�…
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.
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