Auckland Castle, Bishop Auckland, County Durham: Tree-ring Analysis and Radiocarbon Wiggle-Matching of ex-situ Oak Timbers from the West Mural Tower
Author(s): Alison Arnold, Robert Howard, Cathy Tyers, Ian Tyers, A Bayliss, Silvia Bollhalder, Irka Hajdas, Lukas Wacker
Dendrochronological analysis was undertaken on eight ex situ oak timbers removed from the collapsed roof of the West Mural Tower at Auckland Castle. Although the samples contained relatively short annual growth-ring sequences, this analysis produced a single site chronology (AUKBSQ03) comprising five samples from common rafters, this site chronology being 57 rings long. Despite being compared to an extensive corpus of reference chronologies, there was no conclusive cross-dating for either the site chronology or the remaining individual ring series and thus all samples remain undated by dendrochronology. Radiocarbon dating was undertaken on eight single-ring samples from AUK-B73, the longest tree-ring series in site sequence AUKBSQ03. Wiggle-matching of these results, taking account of the missing sapwood rings on the samples, indicates that the five cross-matched coeval common rafters from the roof of the West Mural tower were felled in the AD 1420s or AD 1430s.
- Report Number:
- 77/2019
- Series:
- Research Report
- Pages:
- 42
- Keywords:
- Dendrochronology Radiocarbon Dating Standing Building Wiggle-Match
