Discovering Europe’s History Through its Timbers

An analysis of timber used to construct buildings in Europe hundreds of years ago is giving scientists and historians new insights into the region’s history from the 13th to 17th centuries. Using samples of wood taken from old buildings in Europe, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, a historian and paleoclimatologist at Stockholm University, and Andrea Seim, a dendrochronologist at the University of Freiburg, figured out when the trees used in the buildings were cut down. They then created a huge database of building activity over hundreds of years. The researchers used this information to uncover societal trends. Changes in construction activity often reflect changes in society, making them good indicators of what was happening at a certain time period. In this episode of Third Pod from the Sun, Ljungqvist and Seim explain how they were able to date construction timbers in buildings in Europe to reconstruct building activity from 1250 to 1699 and used this information to uncover information about society at the time. The researchers explain how they get their samples, the expected and surprising results they uncovered about the Black Death, the Great Famine, the Thirty Years’ War and the Late Medieval Crisis, and how their large collection of tree felling dates can serve as new historic source material for studying European history. This episode was produced by Nanci Bompey and Liza Lester and mixed by Robyn Murray and Jon Schriner.