Medieval oak chronology from Klaipėda, Lithuania

Abstract Klaipėda is a town in western Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. Oak timber was actively used to construct buildings in this town until the 17th century. Archaeological investigations began in Klaipėda’s old town in 1979, but it has not been possible to use oak timbers for dating due to the lack of regional chronologies. The goal of this study was to fill this gap by developing a well-replicated oak chronology from timber collected in Klaipėda between 1979 and 1987. The resulting oak chronology from Klaipėda spans 306 years from 1247 to 1552 and includes 62 oak timber cross-sections. The study suggests that the timber was felled in the same local woodland, and that tree-ring widths series from Klaipėda are temperature-sensitive. The negative pointer years mostly coincide with negative anomalies of reconstructed April‒September temperature from elsewhere in Europe. The constructed chronology was compared with local chronologies (Vilquro, Smarhon, Gdansk) and with oak chronologies made from imported oak timber of southeast Baltic origin (Baltic 1-3, Dutch). We assessed whether it is possible to determine the origins of the Baltic 1, Baltic 3 and Dutch oak chronologies compiled from imported timber. Based on available chronologies, it could be hypothesised that Baltic 1 and Dutch chronologies are originated from western Lithuania and Baltic 3 from eastern Lithuania.