ArchaeoForest

Report

As a follow-up project to ArchaeoMontan2018 (2016 – 2018) and ArchivNet (2018 – 2020), ArchaeoForest, another collaborative project of the Saxony State Office of Archaeology, the Saxony Competence Center for Forests and Forestry, and the Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology at the University of Greifswald, is funded by the Forest Climate Fund.

Since trees store long-term processes in their annual rings in addition to exceptional events such as forest fires, pest infestations or floods, the wood finds from the medieval mines of the Ore Mountains are a unique environmental and climatic archive that can be used to shed light on long-term information on the adaptability of forest communities to climatic changes. The high temporal and spatial resolution information on environmental and climatic development can provide concrete information on the composition and resilience of the original forest in the medieval climatic optimum (11th to 13th century). These, in turn, form the basis for validating long-term forest development concepts in the face of current climate change. The most important basis for this are the dendrochronological investigations of the pit timbers, which were carried out in Mannheim as in the two previous projects. By the end of 2020, 1163 wood samples have been dated in these projects.

Project report at sachsen.de:
www.archaeologie.sachsen.de/projektstart-archaeoforest-mittelalterliche-waldzusammensetzung-als-basis-forstwirtschaftlicher-anpassungen-an-den-klimawandel-7279.html