Clemson University TigerPrints All Theses Theses 5-2012 Dendrochronology: A Status Report for the Eastern United States Elyse Harvey Clemson University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses Part of the Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons Recommended Citation Harvey, Elyse, "Dendrochronology: A Status Report for the Eastern United States" (2012). All Theses. 1374. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1374 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DENDROCHRONOLOGY: A STATUS REPORT FOR THE EASTERN UNITED STATES A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Schools of Clemson University and College of Charleston In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Master of Science Historic Preservation by Elyse Harvey May 2012 Accepted by: Carter L. Hudgins, Ph. D., Committee Chair Richard Marks Frances H. Ford Ralph Muldrow ABSTRACT Architectural historians and historic preservation practitioners have turned with increasing frequency to dendrochronology to determine dates of construction for houses and other timber structures for which the application of traditional dating techniques, chief among them historical documentation and stylistic analysis, failed. Since the advent of modern, statistically-driven tree-ring dating, analysis of the application of dendrochronology on the eastern region of the United States reveals that the use of this scientific technique has been unevenly applied and is most often used in New England and the Chesapeake. While the techniques used by American dendrochronologists are generally similar, practitioners have failed to adopt a consistent methodology.