#dendrochronology — Public Fediverse posts

Burnt Wooden Beams from Jerusalem’s First Temple Destruction Unearthed in the City of David

Archaeologists have uncovered a remarkable set of charred wooden beams dating to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE during excavations at the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David, within the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The discovery, made by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University, provides rare physical evidence of one of the most significant events in the history of the ancient city: the destruction of the First Temple.

The massive timbers were found inside a First Temple period building that collapsed during the devastating fire that accompanied the Babylonian conquest. According to archaeologists, their extraordinary preservation was made possible by an unusual combination of circumstances. As the building burned, wall plaster melted and flowed over the collapsed beams, sealing the charred wood beneath it and protecting it from decay for approximately 2,600 years.

A roof structure frozen in time

Excavation director Efrat Bocher believes the beams originally supported the roof of an inner courtyard within the building. When the structure was destroyed by fire, the roof collapsed onto the floor, where the timbers remained buried beneath layers of debris.

https://youtu.be/1P2lfAdk8hU

Wood rarely survives for millennia in the climate of the southern Levant, making the discovery particularly significant. The find offers archaeologists an exceptionally well-preserved glimpse into the architecture and construction techniques of Jerusalem during the late Iron Age.

A breakthrough for dendrochronological research

One of the most important aspects of the discovery is the unusually high number of tree rings preserved in the beams. According to Dr. Johanna Regev of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the timbers provide an unprecedented opportunity for dendrochronological analysis.

Until now, wooden remains from the region have generally allowed dating within broad chronological ranges spanning centuries. These newly discovered beams, however, contain enough growth rings to potentially narrow dating to within a decade, offering a level of precision rarely achieved for archaeological contexts from the First Temple period.

A landscape shaped by memory

The excavation team also suggests that Jerusalem’s inhabitants, after returning to rebuild the city, may have intentionally left portions of the destruction untouched. According to Dr. Yiftah Shalev, who co-directs the excavation with Prof. Yuval Gadot, preserving the ruined remains may have served as a deliberate act of collective remembrance.

This concept, often described as a “landscape of memory,” is known from other ancient societies, where visible traces of catastrophe were intentionally retained to commemorate dramatic historical events. In Jerusalem, the archaeological evidence appears to reflect a conscious decision to build a new city while preserving material evidence of its destruction beneath later occupation layers.

Announced shortly before Tisha B’Av, the annual Jewish fast commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples, the discovery carries particular historical and symbolic significance. For the excavation team, these charred beams represent a direct and deeply moving witness to the moment when ancient Jerusalem was consumed by fire.

Opening image: 3. The burnt wooden beams discovered in the City of David. Photo Reut Vilf, City of David

Source: IAA – Israel Antiquities Authority

#52wochenfotochallenge #lichtundschatten & #FotoVorschlag #Thermometer & #fossilfriday

Ein #Sammlungsstück zu den heutigen Hashtags: Kein echtes #Fossil - subfossil, noch nicht #versteinert , aber dabei 😁

Ein gut 6.000 Jahre altes Stück #Holz 🪵 aus der #Elbe in Tschechien, bei dem man die #Jahresringe als hellere und dunklere Linien erkennen kann. So kann man nicht nur die vorgeschichtlichen Temperaturen 🌡️ ablesen, sondern per #Dendrochronologie auch das Alter bestimmen 🧙‍♂️

#dendrochronology

Some of my samples from Dalkeith Old Oaks used to build a 450 year long oak chronology for South East #Scotland. Publication imminent. #FindsFriday #dendrochronology

Tracing the origins of Stradivari’s resonance wood

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1125786526000123 #EconomicBotany #Botany #Dendrochronology #MusicHistory

New review: A nicely balanced collection of essays with long-lived trees from around the globe that provides ten different answers to the question: "And what else can you learn from tree rings?"

https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2026/01/14/book-review-in-the-circle-of-ancient-trees-our-oldest-trees-and-the-stories-they-tell/

#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Dendrochronology #Trees #Wood #Forests #Plants #Botany #Scicomm @bookstodon

A massive multi-stem oak which #Dendrochronology revealed has an early 19th C stem origin date. It looks much older. This is in the wood pasture ‘Dairy Wood’ at Borders Forest Trust’s Corehead estate near Moffat. #ThickTrunkTuesday #treeclub #trees

Multi-Disciplinary Reconstruction Of Debris Flow Events And Dynamics In The Northern Apennines, Italy - A Multiscale Approach Linking Ground Evidence With Climatic Triggers
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2025.109708 <-- shared paper
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #engineeringgeology #massmovement #geology #landslide #debrisflow #multidisciplinary #geomorphology #pluvial #precipitation #dendrogeomorphological #treerings #dendrochronology #dating #chronology #reconstruction #geomorphmetry #processmodel #flowchart #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #mountains #orthophotos #historicphotos #geopedology #soil #hydraulic #alpedisucciso #trees #vegatation #downslope #risk #hazard #assessment #remotesensing #water #hydrology #rainfall #records #NorthernApennines #susceptibility #Italy

Tree rings and charred millet rewrite the Bronze Age history of Tabakoni in western Georgia. Precise dates reveal centuries of rebuilding, wetland farming, and persistence in the Colchian lowlands. #Archaeology #BronzeAge #Caucasus #Dendrochronology https://www.anthropology.net/p/timber-time-and-the-rise-of-a-mound

St Mary’s Haddington 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 has some remarkable medieval oak timbers in the nave roof. My #dendrochronology work there dated them to the early 1400s and revealed them as Baltic baulks from the Gdansk region. #MedievalMonday

Trouet delights us with her dedication to the tangible appeal of studying trees, a discipline that has taken her to austere and beautiful landscapes around the globe and has enabled scientists to solve long-pondered mysteries of Earth and its human inhabitants.

#books
#trees
#dendrochronology

Tree Story by Valerie Trouet, 2020

The History of the World Written in Rings
Children around the world know that to tell how old a tree is, you count its rings. Few people, however, know that research into tree rings has also made amazing contributions to our understanding of Earth's climate history and its influences on human civilization over the past 2,000 years.

#books
#nonfiction
#trees
#TreeRings
#dendrochronology

Ardura Community Forest, Mull 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The Mull & Iona Community Trust engaged us to find out the age of oaks which had been felled in the 1960s when the Sitka spruce plantation was created by the Forestry Commission. They were mostly around 200 years old. #dendrochronology #ThickTrunkTuesday #Mull

#KnowledgeByte: #Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed.

Here is a brief overview.

https://knowledgezone.co.in/posts/What-is-Dendrochronology-5f01716ff038d77bc682f4cf

@glennf @maxleibman
Now, that’s not a term you’ll hear everyday.
#dendrochronology

I cut myself in half to reveal my tree rings. #dendrochronology
https://beige.party/@maxleibman/114848276288629121

I am looking forward to Monday the 26th of May! The day starts with a great symposium on #dendrochronology and #archaeology https://www.archonline.nl/may-2025/tree-rings-and-archaeology-current-issues-in-the-low-countries-and-beyond-26-may-2025/
In the afternoon I will publicly defend my thesis:
https://vu.nl/nl/agenda/2025/promotie-r-m-visser
And after that it's time for a drink!

On Monday May 26 we will host a small symposium on current issues in #dendrochronology and #archaeology with many great speakers:
https://www.archonline.nl/may-2025/tree-rings-and-archaeology-current-issues-in-the-low-countries-and-beyond-26-may-2025/

I have written a small R-script to download all tree-ring data from the ITRDB (measurements and chronologies). Anyone can create a local copy, just in case the data might not be available anymore from @noaa.gov

https://github.com/RonaldVisser/Download_ITRDB

#dendrochronology #treering #opendata #share

Special archaeo-dendro issue of Dendrochronologia being produced … going to be interesting … follow @dendro-aoife.bsky.social for more info. She is in the hot seat bringing it about. Good idea Aoife, BlueSky is all about the tags #dendroarchaeologia #dendrochronology #archaeology #ForestFriday

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jxcgfnd7gjcyhnvjnihchpmm/post/3llgc2ibgdk2l

A collaborative contribution is ‘in preparation’ as they say. Thanks to Aoife @dendro-aoife.bsky.social and her Dendrochronologia colleagues for making this happen. #Dendrochronology #Archaeology

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jxcgfnd7gjcyhnvjnihchpmm/post/3lkpy6jc3u22k

Perfect day for some dendro fieldwork

#ecology #science #research #dendrochronology #photography

@remixtures wow, Mauna Loa CO2 data is used for a lot of things, not only #ClimateChange science, #DendroChronology for example. This will affect a lot of scientists also out of the US.
#USpol affects us all.

Cool new paper using tree-rings to reconstruct historical and contemporary #fire prevalence in North American #forests.

The eastern US is often thought of as the "wet" side of the country, but fires were frequent and large and intentional, historically. And even as reduced fire contributes to mesophication, #drought intensification means severe fires can still occur.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56333-8

#wildfire #ecology #dendrochronology #biogeography #ClimateChange

Transport of bulk materials such as #wood in the #Roman period was most likely done in these large barges, transporting timber over short and sometimes long distances (> 100 km). How do we now this? Answer:
#Archaeology, #Dendrochronology and #DataScience, see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/496yfzz2

I have updated the list of #rstats packages for #dendrochronology by adding the CTRing package that was recently published in Dendrochronologia:

https://ronaldvisser.github.io/Dendro_R/

Currently at the Joint Chapter Meeting of @caanlfl and @caade5 in Groningen

https://nlfl.caa-international.org/events/meetings/joint-chapter-meeting-2024/

I will be presenting on the challenges and fun of creating a package (https://docs.ropensci.org/dendroNetwork/) for @rOpenSci

#archaeology #dendrochronology #openscience

#QuizOfTheDay: #Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed in a tree.

Who is considered to be founder of the discipline of dendrochronology?

A. Willard Libby
B. A. E. Douglass
C. Carl Linnaeus
D. Gregor Mendel

https://knowledgezone.co.in/resources/quiz?qId=64f8267b85f6e319f4a3cb16

#QuizOfTheDay: What is #Dendrochronology?

A. Study of Snakes
B. Study of Birds
C. Study of Fish
D. Scientific method of dating tree

https://knowledgezone.co.in/resources/quiz?qId=5f5e3c7b5ca73eb9bc22b411