This chapter emphasizes understanding and appreciation of “woody plants” – trees, shrubs, subshrubs, and more – as biological organisms, environmental lifeforms. The central point being that such an understanding bears directly on any interpretation of archaeological wood. The details provided concerning the basic morphological features and gross anatomical characteristics of woody plants serve in part also as a prelude to more in-depth discussion of wood structural and anatomical traits and variation in later chapters. Woody plants grow, rest, mature, age, flower, bear fruit, interact with neighbors, react to environmental circumstances, and respond to signals from a host of external influences. Wood, technically secondary xylem, serves major roles as part of an integrated, dynamic system of tissues that together are integral to plant physiology, health, and longevity. Trees express juvenile, mature, and senescent stages of wood development; “reaction” wood forms mainly in response to gravitational forces and is useful to distinguish branch from stem wood. The details of growth rings and other anatomical traits provide insights into important life-history events and long-term growth circumstances affecting trees. These details in turn may serve as proxy evidence of past forest structure and the bioclimatic conditions to which once living trees responded, with relevance also to human well-being and culture. Archaeological wood is thus a richly textured source of information about the past, relating the lives of ancient trees, potentially also including human influences.

This chapter outlines the main steps in the process of archaeological wood analysis for taxonomic assessment. Preparation of specimens and sampling for anatomical characterization, followed by microscopy and anatomical data collection, then the identification process leading to a taxonomic assignment. Difficulties and problems unique to working with wood in fragmentary, degraded, and/or distorted conditions are examined, including how to deal with these and a variety of related issues. Several new frontiers in wood identification and analysis such as automated systems, DNA methods, high-resolution microscopy, and more are also described. The overall aim is to provide readers and students of the subject with an improved understanding of the potential along with the limitations involved in assigning woods taxonomically, both modern and ancient. A thorough comprehension of wood anatomy and its relationship to biological systematics and taxonomy is essential, necessary both to accuracy of assignment and to valid reporting. This in turn ensures that archaeological results are suitable for incorporation into broader archaeological and paleoecological frameworks, thus made more accessible and widely relevant across historical and scientific disciplines.

This chapter begins by overviewing the history of discoveries and related circumstances involving archaeological wood, with emphasis on developments since the mid-18th-century emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline. The prominent role of environmental contexts that afford exceptional organic preservation is explicit, with material from perpetually moist, or conversely, quite arid settings having been dominant themes from the beginning. The relevance and variety of archaeological contexts, site formation processes, and the dominant forms of wood preservation (carbonized, waterlogged, desiccated, mineralized), as well as the different classes or categories of wooden remains and objects that may be found archaeologically are explained in detail. Choices, procedures, and issues related to excavation, field sampling, field recovery, and immediate handling of archaeological wood are also described.

This chapter details and explains wood anatomy, including the fundamental distinctions between hardwoods, or flowering plants, and softwoods, mainly the conifers. The principal cell types and defining characteristics of secondary xylem are described, with emphasis on the details and traits most relevant to wood identification and work with archaeological wood. The second half of the chapter reviews well-documented variability in anatomical expression that may result from a wide range of internal and external stimuli, including delving further into functional and ecological variation (i.e., juvenile wood, reaction wood, such as were initially described in Chapter 3). The deliberate and secondary effects of human activities influencing wood development and woodland resources generally are also examined.

This chapter examines some of the analytical procedures and practicalities of work with archaeological wood, aside from wood identification (Chapter 5). The categories and variety of primary data commonly used and reported in archaeological wood analysis are reviewed, including concerns inherent to work with ancient material. Anatomical observations and morphometric data collection at the larger, macroscopic scale are elaborated, including observations and procedures concerning sample selection for radiocarbon dating purposes. Some of the coverage relates directly to the broader research involving growth-ring variation, that is, dendroclimatology and related fields, some of which is described in earlier chapters. The general analytical approaches that are nowadays commonly used to report and compare among archaeological wood assemblages are overviewed, as are issues involving temporal and spatial resolution, including discrepancies, results that deviate from expectations. The chapter concludes with a view toward the future, directing attention to the relevance of archaeological wood in the modern world, not the least being as a record of past climate dynamics and global change.