Dendrochronology

Has anyone heard of dating of books with wooden boards by means of
dendrochronological analyses?

I have recently been involved in attempts to date the missale of
Skara (Skara is a town in Sweden). The missale consists of two
bindings in white leather with boards of oak and the textblock
written on parchment. My task was to lift the turn-ins to expose the
cross-sections of the wooden boards. The geologist, Hans Linderson,
was then able to measure the space between the tree-rings. After
comparing with references he was able to date one of the books to
after or from the year 1264. He could also see that the oak, from
which the wooden boards were made, had grown in the western parts of
Sweden, just in the region where Skara is situated (Vastergotland).
He was not able to find a correspondent reference for the other
binding, but a C-14 analysis will be made of those boards.

I m interested to know if similar studies have been made somewhere
else.

Kristina Enhorning
Bookbinder and Conservator
The Regional Archives in Lund
Box 2016
SE-220 02 Lund
Sweden
+46 46 19 70 00
+46 46 30 35 74
Fax: +46 46 30 35 76


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:16
                  Distributed: Friday, August 30, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-16-16-008
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