Dendrochronology is the establishment of the date of wood by examination of annual growth rings in trees. Dates can typically be established within one year of accuracy.
Tree Rings
This technique is particularly valuable for Old Master European paintings. Artists such as Cranach, Raphael, Dürer, and Giotto, for instance, painted only on panel. Wood was the typical support for paintings until the seventeenth century.
Every year in temperate climates, trees create a new layer of wood under the bark. In good years the layer is thick; in years of drought or excessive heat or cold, the layer is small.
There is reference data to cross-match with the samples for many, but not all, trees. The reference chronology is made by overlapping tree-ring patterns from a series of progressively older trees. In order to insure the most exact match, there must be a minimum of one hundred rings in the sample.
There is particularly good dendrochronological data for oak in Western Europe and North America. In England, the master chronologies for oak go back to 5000 B.C.
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