Science & TechnologyGreek → English
Dendrochronology
/ˌdɛndroʊkrəˈnɑlədʒi/noun
Dating events and timbers by matching the pattern of annual growth rings in wood.
The Greek roots
δένδρον
déndron
tree
χρόνος
chrónos
time
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of tree time”
The story of the word
An astronomer invented tree-ring dating. A. E. Douglass wanted a long record of sunspot cycles, reasoned that rings must register the weather the sun drives, and spent years matching ring patterns from living trees back through beams pulled out of Southwestern pueblos. In 1929 a charred beam closed the last gap in his sequence and dated Ancestral Puebloan ruins to the exact year, the first absolute chronology in American archaeology.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
dendrologychronologychronicanachronism
In a sentence
Dendrochronology put the roof timbers at 1247, give or take a season.
Oak sequences now let dendrochronology date European buildings back several thousand years.