The dendrochronological proof of origin of oak churches located in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Transcarpathian wooden churches started to dilapidate after World War I. To preserve the architectural heritage, five oak churches were transported from the region to the territory of today's Czech Republic. However, an exact date of their construction and origin of wood have not been specified and evidenced in literature. In this study, 63 samples have been collected and processed using standard dendrochronological methods. Three Baroque churches, coming from the Mukachevo district, were absolutely dated thanks to the preserved waney edge or sapwood tree rings to periods 1734–1744, 1753–1755, and 1783–1795. Two other churches, representing Gothic architecture, were transported from a more eastern part of Transcarpathian Ukraine. One of them was dated to the period after 1655 and the other could not be reliably dated using available reference chronologies. The created mean tree-ring width series representing individual churches showed strong correlations with the reference chronologies for Slovakia and northern Romania whereas correlations with the only Ukrainian chronology (Lviv region) were negligible. This could suggest low Transcarpathian tree-ring coherency and may indicate the need to create a dense network of regional tree-ring width chronologies in the regions surrounding the Carpathian Mountains.