Tree-ring analysis of archaeological charcoal as a tool to identify past woodland management: The case from a 14th century site from Oudenaarde (Belgium)

The growth-ring pattern and basal area increment (BAI) of round wood charcoal fragments from Carpinus betulus, Corylus avellana, Fraxinus excelsior and Quercus sp. from a 14th century archaeological context has been studied and compared to those of modern samples from both coppice woodland and dominant trees in high forests. The archaeological charcoal fragments show a strong initial growth rate, but after 4-8 years this starts to decrease for all investigated taxa. For Fraxinus excelsior, the decrease generally occurs after 9-11 years. In general, this trend in ring width is comparable to the one observed on samples from modern day coppice and is clearly different for the samples from high-forest stands where ring width generally starts to decrease after a much longer period or at a much lower rate. BAI-values can be interpreted in a similar way, where these values for both the archaeological charcoal fragments and shoots from modern coppice reach a plateau or start a decreasing trend after 4-8 years. In contrast, BAI values for high-forest trees show a continuous increase. The results indicate that studying the tree-ring pattern and BAI of roundwood charcoal fragments from archaeological contexts might be a useful approach for the reconstruction of past woodland management and the identification of (pre)historic coppice. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.