Our laboratory handles dendrochronological dating of the wooden segments of monuments, historical wooden structures, wooden fixtures (altars, panel paintings, choirstalls, wooden ceilings, ornate balustrades, etc.) and archeological wooden artefacts. The laboratory in Miercurea Ciuc (Harghita county, Romania) was founded and operated by Boglárka Tóth and István Botár in 2007.
The Transylvanian exploration of monuments and archeological dendrochronological research between 2003 and 2006, as well as between 2012 and 2016 was carried out by us with the support of applications to the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA, projects F043167, K 100983) led by Dr. András Grynaeus. We work together regularly with architects of monuments, restorers, art historians, and archeologists in Transylvania. From 2007 we practiced dendrochronological research at nearly 200, primarily Transylvanian monuments. From the wooden samples which originated mostly from buildings, we could put together more accurately dated chronologies and also longer series of data of the local annual rings of the timber researched. In the case of oak the referential annual ring data goes back from our days to the mid-12th century in our research, as our silver fir data are valid to the end of the 13th century. In this way, primarily we have the possibility to date oak and silver fir samples.
Dating samples from spruce structures and installations was frequently unsuccessful nearly all the time up to the recent past. But through the yearly research programme of the Gyula Forster National Inheritance Protection and Wealth Management Centre in 2015 we succeeded in increasing considerably the data series of the spruce samples from the 17th -19th centuries and due to this fact in dozens of cases there were datings which turned out well, so there will be a better chance that the next time with further spruce samples, more accurate data will be gained.
In the last years we worked together with several researchers from whom we got a lot of advice, information and help. We would like to name some of them. These are the ones without whom our laboratory would have not come to life, and to whom we turn regularly for professional help: Ólafur Eggertsson, Michael Grabner, András Grynaeus, Ionel Popa, Ferenc Mihály, Denis Walgraffe, Thomasz Wazny, Sigrid Wrobel.
