The First Dendrochronological Dating of Timber from Tajikistan – Potential for Developing a Millennial Tree-Ring Record

Abstract

We are reporting the first dendrochronological dating of timber from Tajikistan. Thirty samples were collected from two old buildings from a village located in the western Pamir-Alay; eight cores were taken from temple. Most of the construction wood was juniper species. The object chronologies crossdated well with the previously published chronology based on living juniper trees from western Pamir-Alay. The results of dating revealed that investigated structures are composed of wood coming from several periods. The oldest pieces of wood dated back to the 11th and 12th Centuries. Most timber samples come from the turn of the 17th and 18th Centuries, which were probably the period of intense development of the Artuch village. Besides dating of the wood samples from these historic structures, our investigation provides the opportunity to extend the currently existing regional tree-ring chronology for future climate reconstruction of the Pamir-Alay and High Asia. Dated sequences were assembled into a 1012-year chronology spanning the period 945–2014 C.E. and strengthened the replication of its earliest part (with critical 0.85 EPS value since the beginning of the 13th Century).