Multi-elemental and Strontium-Neodymium Isotopic Signatures in Charred Wood: Potential for Wood Provenance Studies

What is it about?

Wood was vital for pre-industrial society and to know its geographical origin is of high interest for archeologists and historians, who can then reconstruct trade routes and understand economic development in the past. The wood is better preserved when charred and most of the archeological woods are indeed found in small calcined fragments and their tree-ring series are too short to determine the origin based on tree-ring pattern. We propose hereby an alternative technique to trace burnt wood based on chemical and isotopic composition, which is characteristic of local geology. The protocol was tested on oak wood samples burnt at different temperatures, for which composition in trace elements and in Sr and Nd isotopes was measured.

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