How Cultural Heritage Studies Based on Dendrochronology Can Be Improved through Two-Way Communication
, Gunnar Almevik 2, Linda Lindblad 2, Hans Linderson 1 and Karl-Magnus Melin 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
I really enjoyed reading the paper. I think it is very informative and it is a paper that can get many citations. The manuscript fits perfectly to the Special Issue entitled: “Dendrochronology: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Assess Wooden Cultural Heritage Worldwide”. I have only a few general suggestions and some minor comments/ remarks that you may find in the attached pdf. I do hope that these comments will be helpful.
General comments
The introduction with a few parts that need clarifications is nicely written, but the scope of the manuscript is not clearly described. It should be added at the end of the Introduction section and relative information from the materials and methods section should be deleted or revised (e.g. see lines 97-101).
One of my concerns is whether you have permission to use the data from the reports you mentioned if they are still not published or available to the public.
Materials and Methods are very short and the reader does not understand what exactly you have done. Which information have you extracted from the reports and the paper you revised? You should clearly describe the steps that you followed to reach the results that you present later.
The figures are really impressive and very informative. I am not sure if Fig. 1 is necessary, especially if it is not produced by you.
Specific comments
See attached file
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear authors,
I really enjoyed reading the paper. I think it is very informative and it is a paper that can get many citations. The manuscript fits perfectly to the Special Issue entitled: “Dendrochronology: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Assess Wooden Cultural Heritage Worldwide”. I have only a few general suggestions and some minor comments/ remarks that you may find in the attached pdf. I do hope that these comments will be helpful.
Response: Thanks a lot. We have reviewed all comments and suggestions for minor changes that were attached to the pdf file and accommodated all as well as adding the suggested references. The comments were very helpful and have improved the overall quality of the manuscript.
General comments
The introduction with a few parts that need clarifications is nicely written, but the scope of the manuscript is not clearly described. It should be added at the end of the Introduction section and relative information from the materials and methods section should be deleted or revised (e.g. see lines 97-101).
Response: We agree and have therefore added: “The scope of our study is to (i) review literature, reports, and interpretation of reports from surveys on construction timber from Swedish churches, as well as (ii) interviews and dialogues between dendrochronologists and end users who use dendrochronolog-ical reports and data for their work with cultural heritage issues concerning Swedish churches” towards the end of the introduction.
One of my concerns is whether you have permission to use the data from the reports you mentioned if they are still not published or available to the public.
Response: All the reports, interviews and literature have been reported and published, even though all the data etc. has not been published online on the “Old Wood in a New Light Database” yet.
Materials and Methods are very short and the reader does not understand what exactly you have done. Which information have you extracted from the reports and the paper you revised? You should clearly describe the steps that you followed to reach the results that you present later.
Response: We agree. We have therefore increased the amount of information in the Method section substantially. We have, for example, added following information about how the interviews were made and reviewed: “To describe the situation and develop a standard procedure of practice when it comes to initiate dendrochronological investigation in churches, interviews have been performed with researchers and consultants in dendrochronology as well as historians focusing on building conservation. During sampling of a Medieval roof layer in Strängnäs diocese, participants could observe potential sources of error in the process. From these observations’ questions could be developed through situations that otherwise could not have been foreseen. The first three interviews were made in 2019 during the research projects at the Stora Hammar and Rängs churches, Lund diocese. The an-alysed samples were later included in the project Timmermanskonst (www.timmermanskonst.se) in Lund diocese. Thereafter interviews at Ripsa church, Strängnäs diocese, with two building antiquarians at Sörmlands museum and a craftsman from Construction and crafts in Karlskoga AB were made. The interviews were conducted with two construction craftsmen and carpenters, and two dendro-chronologist, as well as a senior lecturer in cultural preservation. To get an objective view of the compilations from the interviews and conversations, the compilation texts have been reviewed by (i) diocesan antiquaries and engineers from all 13 dioceses in Sweden, (ii) cultural environment officers from all 21 counties in Sweden, as well as (iii) representants from the church office and the National Heritage Board. We have also participated in seminars at Heritage Science Sweden 2018 and the Building Maintenance Convention 2019. In total five such seminars with heritage officers and professionals in built heritage conservation were conducted aiming to discuss what a good practice is and should be.”
The figures are really impressive and very informative. I am not sure if Fig. 1 is necessary, especially if it is not produced by you.
Response: We produced the figure, but it’s not based on our own results. We therefore removed the figure and added references to the text.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments are in the file attached
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Review of the manuscript (MS)
How cultural heritage studies based on dendrochronology can be improved through two-way
Communication by Johannes Edvardsson et al.
The MS presents summary of the authors’ experience and their review of vast literature and multiple dendro-reports. Despite the MS contains valuable information for general dendrochronological studies (not limited to the churches in Sweden), I see several major shortcomings of the MS:
Response: Thanks for reviewing the manuscript and for valuable comments.
1) It is too long and contains many general reflections on the topic. It could be significantly shortened without loss of important information.
Response: We have reworked the text, and even though we extended the Method section substantially (see shortcoming 2), the overall text has been shortened by a whole page.
2) Although there are many results cited that come from the “interviews”, the methodology of the
interviews is not clear. In this case, the results might be biased by the interpreter. In general, this part of the research may be characterized rather as a summarized experience of the authors, than a well-performed study based on interviews.
Response: We agree and have added a more in-depth description of the interviews. We added: “To describe the situation and develop a standard procedure of practice when it comes to initiate dendrochronological investigation in churches, interviews have been performed with researchers and consultants in dendrochronology as well as historians focusing on building conservation. During sampling of a Medieval roof layer in Strängnäs diocese, participants could observe potential sources of error in the process. From these observations’ questions could be developed through situations that otherwise could not have been foreseen. The first three interviews were made in 2019 during the research projects at the Stora Hammar and Rängs churches, Lund diocese. The an-alysed samples were later included in the project Timmermanskonst (www.timmermanskonst.se) in Lund diocese. Thereafter interviews at Ripsa church, Strängnäs diocese, with two building antiquarians at Sörmlands museum and a craftsman from Construction and crafts in Karlskoga AB were made. The interviews were conducted with two construction craftsmen and carpenters, and two dendro-chronologist, as well as a senior lecturer in cultural preservation. To get an objective view of the compilations from the interviews and conversations, the compilation texts have been reviewed by (i) diocesan antiquaries and engineers from all 13 dioceses in Sweden, (ii) cultural environment officers from all 21 counties in Sweden, as well as (iii) representants from the church office and the National Heritage Board. We have also participated in seminars at Heritage Science Sweden 2018 and the Building Maintenance Convention 2019. In total five such seminars with heritage officers and professionals in built heritage conservation were conducted aiming to discuss what a good practice is and should be.”
3) I completely disagree with the last paragraph of the Discussion section and insist that it must be overwritten before the publication. T-values must be reported, as well as the exact procedures used for its calculation (as different ones may be used). Dendrochronology is a precise method coming with certain limitations. But without reporting t-values, it is becoming an “art” of visual interpretation and personal experience. All the implications for dating coming from personal experience must also be specified, described and justified in the report (e.g. high t-values coming from one significant growth suppression). I also suggest including into the MS some benchmarks for the t-values which show high, medium and low reliability.
Response: Thanks. We can clearly see your point and will instead encourage the use of t-values in the reports provided that the t-value is explained. We changed to: “Reports presenting t-values must clarify how the value has been calculated and how large overlap it is based on if the end user should be able to compare the t-values between results presented in different reports”. We kept the part that: “the dendrochronologist has other statistical parameters, opportunities for visual comparisons between annual tree-ring series, the possibility to eliminate the influence of extremes in the data series, as well as experience in being able to evaluate whether a cross-dating is reliable or not. With the aggregate information, the dendrochronologist can sometimes choose to rely on a cross-date with a certain t-value but dismiss another with a larger t-value”. But added that the dendrochronologist in such cases MUST explain how and why in the reports.
4) It will be also good to see in the MS some guidance for dendro-dating which is restricted by other type of dating information, e.g. radiocarbon dates or stratigraphy, or accompanying archaeological material. E.g. when we have the best possible dendro-date inside the period specified by another method.
Response: In the section “3.4.8. Alternatives when Results are Questionable or Unreliable”, we discuss radiocarbon and historical sources, and we have added stratigraphic records.
5) I haven’t mentioned in the description of the sampling procedures a point that is usually important for me when I select beams for sampling: the number of rings. Usually, I try to select beams with the maximum number of rings. It will improve cross-dating statistics. It provides some general guidance for dendro-dating research and may be important as a user manual,
especially for the beginners. However, it would be good to reduce the amount of general information and to focus on step-by-step recommendations and guidance.
Response: We agree and have removed some general information and reduced the total number of pages to put more focus on the step-by-step recommendations and guidance towards the end of the ms.
Minor points:
LL217-219: an important characteristics of a species is also the medium age.
Response: We agree and have added the information.
LL254-256: it is true that higher chronology replication improves cross-dating. However, I can’t agree that a short series even with a very high replication may be reliably dendrochronologically dated (without the use of additional information). By reliable dendrochronological dating I assume high tvalues. One example – short series with one growth suppression dated against 100-yr master with two growth suppressions.
Response: We agree and have shortened the section to just simply state “If many short tree-ring series can be averaged into an extended joint tree-ring record, the dating can become reliable. But from the end user side, this can cause greater costs and damages on the studied object.”
L422: Fig5 -> Fig3
Response: Correct, we have corrected the mistake.
L509: how to define which part of the tree was used? Please provide description, example or reference.
Response: This is perhaps more related to what craft men can judge than the dendrochronologist. We therefore removed that part of the sentence.
LL539-540: in previous section you argued that dendro-research can always provide additional information
L636: Fig3 -> Fig5
Response: Correct, we have corrected the mistake.
L670: “confidence” – the word is misused?
Response: Yes, we changed the word confidence to caution.
L671: “the value is influenced by the length of the overlapping data series” – yes, and this this one of the advantages of using this statistic – it shows the reliability of dating and takes into account the length of the series.
Response: Yes, the persons working with t-values are aware about this, but the person reading the reports might not. We rewrote this part: “But the t-value alone must be used with caution because (i) different programs can calculate the value in different ways, (ii) the value is influenced by the length of the overlapping data series, and (iii) extreme changes in the growth patterns of trees can produce unreasonably high t-values. Reports presenting t-values must therefore clarify how the value has been calculated and how large overlap it is based on if the end user should be able to compare the t-values between results presented in different reports. Moreover, the dendrochronologist has other statistical parameters, opportunities for visual comparisons between annual tree-ring series, the possibility to eliminate the in-fluence of extremes in the data series, as well as experience in being able to evaluate whether a cross-dating is reliable or not. With the aggregate information, a dendro-chronologist can sometimes choose to rely on a cross-date with a certain t-value but dismiss another with a larger t-value. In such cases, this should be explained in the reports.”
L713: what is “end grain”?
Response: We wanted to state that the outermost parts of the wood should be sampled. The word end grain may not be the best, so we've changed it to "Extract samples containing waney edge or as much sapwood as possible”.
