Exeter, The Old Deanery, Great Chamber, Devon: Dendrochronology and Radiocarbon Wiggle-matching of Oak Timbers
Author(s): Cathy Tyers, Robert Howard, A Bayliss, Bisserka Gaydarska, Michael Dee, Sanne Palstra
Re-analysis of timbers sampled in the 1990s means that three of the site master chronologies (EXTBSQ01, EXTBSQ02, and EXTBSQ04), representing 16-timbers, along with an individual timber (EXT-B20), from the Great Chamber in the Old Deanery are now securely dated by dendrochronology. The nine timbers previously dated (Howard et al. 2000a) all appear to derive from English oak trees and represent both floor and roof timbers. Applying an updated sapwood estimate for trees that grew in South-West England, along with consideration of the variation in the dates of their heartwood/sapwood boundaries, suggests that all these timbers were probability felled at a similar time in the AD 1410s or AD 1420s. These dated timbers are thought to be associated with the initial construction of the Great Chamber/Parlour block that stands today. The growth rings in eight floor joists from the Great Chamber, forming site master chronology EXTBSQ02, have been dated as spanning AD 999–1118. Cross-matching clearly indicates that they were imported from Northern France, and as such they are the first structural timbers identified as being imported from this source into Medieval England. The variation in their heartwood/sapwood boundary dates demonstrates that all eight are clearly coeval, and these timbers are therefore likely to have been felled as part of a single felling event between the early AD 1120s and the mid-AD 1130s.
- Report Number:
- 37/2024
- Series:
- Research Report
- Pages:
- 39
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Wiggle-Match Scientific Dating
