The Wooster Tree Ring Lab and Archaeology Day at the Wayne County Historical Society, Wooster Ohio

The College of Wooster Tree Ring Lab (WTRL) participated in Archaeology Day. It was a beautiful day exchanging views and data between archaeologists, historians, Wooster Earth Scientists and the public.

Li and Leo explain the extraction of local information from tree-ring in Wayne County that is relevance to the Settlement of Wayne County Ohio.

Local collectors, historians and Archaeologists from surrounding counties share their expertise.

Trees as witnesses was common theme and many of the participants grew up around the old growth on The College of Wooster campus as well as Cornerstone Elementary School campus, Browns Lake Bog, Barnes Preserve and Johnson Wood, all in Wayne County.Li worked with the younger participants assembling Tree Ring Lab necklaces (see lower right) and handing out stickers. Before the kids can get a necklace they needed to identify the species of the wood making up the necklace pendant. The log building in the background – the Naftzger cabin, has been dated using tree rings by the WTRL. Here is the report.

Nik shows the group a core from the oldest living tree in Ohio (so far discovered). It is chestnut oak from Stebbins Gulch, which is part of Holden Arboretum. He successfully identified his necklace as a historical piece of white oak from an Ohio barn. White oak is a favorite of the lab and makes up most of the beams of the historic building on the Historical Society campus. Oak truly is the “Frame of Civilizations”.

Local historian (lawyer and College of Wooster graduate) Jeff Musselman stands next to the sign of the Historical Society’s flagship Beall House. It was the tree-ring dating of the Beall House along with Jeff’s historical detective work that determined the exact years that the house was built. Here is the WTRL report on the dating of the Beall House.

Many thanks to Li and Leo for taking a portion of their Saturday to volunteer at Archaeology Day. Li is a senior Earth Scientist working on a field guide for Browns Lake Bog for their thesis and Leo, as a sophomore, is exploring his options. Special thanks to the Historical Society and Roger Rowe for organizing the day and all those volunteers that operate the activities and maintain this amazing campus.