Courtesy of Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist
Medieval plague and the Thirty Years’ War fought in 17th century Europe both had devastating effects on building and development on the continent. That’s the conclusion of a massive new analysis of the timber used in historical European buildings, dated using tree ring methods.
Wood from archaeological sites is routinely collected, analysed and dated using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating. Researchers scoured through earlier studies to compile data on nearly 50,000 such pieces of wood used for constructing buildings from 1250 to 1699. …