_______________________________________________

Research Interests

Timber

From analyses of wood found in historic buildings and on archaeological excavations, I work with questions about timber as a building material, trading commodity, resource (abundant or dwindling) and as an indicator of trade contacts between regions in Northern Europe over the last ca. 2000 years. The precise dating and identification of area of origin that are obtained by these tree-ring analyses, coupled with the find context and usage of the timber (castle, church, ship, barrel, art object, etc.) enables a very nuanced and detailed cultural-historical interpretation.

 

TIMBER (ERC Grant agreement 677152)

In 2016 I was awarded a ERC Starting Grant TIMBER to examine aspects of the trade of timber in Northern Europe using archaeological, historical and scientific methods. This research has filled major gaps in our knowledge of past use of this sought-after resource. The analysis of three major case studies, The Vasa and Bøle ships and river oaks in Latvia, has produced a wealth of new information on Northern Europe’s timber supply, and my experimental technique of low and non-invasive analysis has produced detailed and extensive results. Additional case studies include the examination of the 14th century Bremen Ship to evaluate its timber quality, so that we can detect if timber shortage was a driving force for the increase in timber imports. Also, in collaboration with Ian Tyers, we presented our theory on the Baltic origins of oak that was extensively used, over at least three centuries, for ecclesiastical and secular artworks (15th-17th centuries). We have experimented with techniques to extract sea-water contamination of archaeological timber so that we can measure the strontium isotopic ratio in the original wood, to use as an indicator of provenance. We demonstrated that merging dendroprovenance and strontium isotope results in timber from historic buildings achieved valuable provenance identification, for timber that had been traded in the past. We explored the difficulty of preservation of DNA in archaeological timber. Numerous case studies covering oak from across northern Europe revealed new insights into past exploitation of this resource.

 

Chronology, Culture and Archaeology (CCA). Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (IEF)

From June 2011 to June 2013, I have worked on material from medieval fishtraps on the Fergus Estuary, Co. Clare, Ireland. I have attained high-precision chronology from tree-ring studies of these wooden structures. This analysis contributes to a comprehensive understanding of changes in the exploitation of the river resources over time and of the form, structure and life-spans of wooden fishing structures, including their repair and abandonment year by year - all at a chronological resolution normally impossible to discern in conventional archaeology. This project was hosted by UCD School of Archaeology, where these estuarine remains are currently being investigated. I successfully achieved fine-tuned chronology for complex archaeological structures made of small non-oak wood. Numerous archaeological sites are built using short-lived trees, and these are almost never subjected to tree-ring analysis. I have shown that very rewarding information emerges from this work, allowing a deeper understanding of our human past, while also demonstrating the success of the approach. The tree-ring analysis has been integrated into the stratigraphical, environmental, tree-species and morphological analyses of the structures. This project provided one of the key tools through which past human-environment interactions can be modelled at varying chronological scale of seasons, years and decades.

 

Wood sculpture and artworks

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Denmark I have been carrying out dating and provenance analysis of painted oak panels. This work provides insights into the procurement and supply of oak panels, from the medieval period onwards, to the Dutch and Flemish painting industry. (Daly, A; Läänelaid, A (2012) 'The dendrochronological dating of three paintings in the style of Bosch/Bruegel' In: Hermens, E (eds). On the Trail of Bosch and Bruegel: Four Paintings under Magnification. Glasgow: Archetype Publications/SMK.)

 

DendroCT, non-destructive dendrochronological dating

I have had success in carrying out dendrochronological analysis using non-destructive methods, in cooperation with Professor Jan Bill from Oslo University, thereby attaining precise dates for wooden archaeological objects without needing to damage the object in any way. The results of this breakthrough are published (Bill, J., Dalen, K.S., Daly, A. & Johnsen, Ø. (2012) ’Dendro CT - dendrochronology without damage’, Dendrochronologia, 30 :223-230). Using the techniques developed, additional analyses of wooden artefacts from the famous Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway have been possible, and the results of this is on its way.

 

Ph.d., awarded 2007

In my Ph.D. thesis, I set out to describe and improve the method by which the region of origin of historic oak timber is identified. I worked with historic oak tree-ring data kindly shared by dendrochronology laboratories in Northern Europe, and demonstrated that it is possible to locate the provenance of timbers in quite marked detail. On the basis of a range of case studies, where the methodology was applied to timbers from ancient shipwrecks and barrels, I was able to describe the patterns of the increasing trade in timber in Northern Europe, from early medieval to early modern times, and describe the balance between regions with timber shortages and regions with surplus.