Multi-proxy dendroprovenance: methodological investigations in the East Mediterranean
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Wood from archaeological sites is a potential treasure trove of information for archaeologists and climate scientists, but this will only be fully realized if the provenance of the wood can be determined. For archaeologists and historians, dendroprovenance can reveal patterns of wood supply and facilitate inferences about broader society including its economic systems and societal structures. For climate scientists, tree-ring records provide the most precise climate reconstructions possible, and archaeological wood offers the opportunity to extend records beyond the lifespan of living trees. In this dissertation I develop methods for determining accurate and specific wood provenance. The key insight is that mapping approaches which allow the probability of origin to be assessed continuously across a region can be adapted to tree-ring width and geochemical geographical proxies. This approach allows different methods to be combined to produce the most precise provenance determinations possible. I further show that regional climate reconstructions lose the spatial specificity which ultimately mediates the relationship between humans and their environment. This dissertation, thus, lays a foundation for the implementation of precise dendroprovenancing which can be used to produce spatially resolved climate reconstructions.