Abandoned Oak coppice on both sides of the Jura Mountains: dendroecological growth models highlighting woodland development and management in the past

Olivier Girardclos (1) , André Billamboz (2) , Patrick Gassmann (3)

1 LCE - Laboratoire Chrono-environnement (UMR 6249)
2 Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Baden-Württemberg
3 Laboratoire de dendrochronologie de l'Office et Musée cantonal d'archéologie, LATENIUM

In pre-and historical times, young oak wood played a major role for timber supply, in alternation with logging from older stands. This could be merely illustrated within large scale tree-ring investigations in different chronological and regional situations (Neolithic and Bronze age pile-dwellings at Lake Constance (Germany) and Neuchâtel (Switzerland) shores or medieval settlements in Eastern France. In these different situations we could observe periods with high radial growth rate during the juvenile phase of young even-aged trees and periods of alternating growth decrease and release by older trees. In order to get a better understanding of these phenomena (effect of clearing and/or management based on coppice), dendroecological investigations has been carried out in two relict coppice oak stands. The first stand located at Chantrans, on the first plateau of French Jura, has been managed as coppice to provide firewood and bark for tanning until the 1960's. The second one, on the Eastern slope of the Jurra near Neuchâtel is 130 years old and has been regurlarly thinned for high forest conversion. First results presented are based on dendrotypology and on age trend analysis in comparison with longer tree-ring series from regional stands managed as high-forest and coppice-with-standards where oaks selected are mostly regenerated from acorns. Further steps of this approach should lead to a better understanding of woodland development and related socio-economic processes in the past.

Mots clés: oak; coppice; age trend; dendrochronology; woodland-management

Domaines: Archéologie et Préhistoire

Olivier Girardclos, André Billamboz, Patrick Gassmann. Abandoned Oak coppice on both sides of the Jura Mountains: dendroecological growth models highlighting woodland development and management in the past. Holger Gärtner, Philippe Rozenberg, Patricia Montès, Olivier Bertel, Ingo Heinrich and Gerhard Helle. TRACE Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatology and Ecology Volume 10 Proceedings of the DENDROSYMPOSIUM 2011 May 11th - 14th, 2011 in Orléans, France, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ, pp.71-78, 2012. ⟨hal-00738294⟩