Timber-regionality and temporality in Northern Europe's shipbuilding resource

A great wealth of tree-ring data now exists for oak ships found across Northern Europe, due to the exercise of dating these timbers and, not least, determining their region of origin. This has allowed links between diverse regions to be made, and to see, in this material evidence, patterns of communication growing and changing through time. An even greater wealth of tree-ring data, for oak in Northern Europe, from our terrestrial built heritage provides the tool which we use for dating and locating the source of ships’ timbers. I am beginning to tap into this dendrochronological resource, through analysis of timber size, age and growth rate, to try to attain a picture of the availability of the timber resource for shipbuilding, through time and space.