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The First Dendrochronologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Robert F. Heizer
Robert F. Heizer*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, Calif.
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Extract

In The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise of Charles Babbage, an English mathematician who lived over 100 years ago, is contained an appendix entitled “On the Age of Strata, as Inferred from the Rings of Trees Embedded in Them.“ The account is of particular interest since it defines the method of deriving chronology from treerings, and Babbage actually envisages the possibility of employing the method to secure archaeological dating.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 22 , Issue 2Part1 , October 1956 , pp. 186 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1956

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References

Notes and Bibliography

Charles Babbage's life is sketched by Philip and Emily Morrison in “The Strange Life of Charles Babbage,” Scientific American, Vol. 186, pp. 66-73, 1952.Google Scholar
F. E. Zeuner's remarks are contained in Dating the Past, Methuen, London, 1952. Third edition, revised (400 pp.).Google Scholar
The full citation to Babbage's account (reprinted here) is: The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a Fragment, 2nd edition, John Murray, London, 1838. (Note M, “On the Age of Strata, as Inferred from the Rings of Trees Embedded in Them,” pp. 256–64.)Google Scholar