Chapter 7 - Early Medieval Woodland Management and Timber Production in north-western France, 400-1200 CE: The Beginning or The End of Forestry Experiments?
Résumé
In contrast to the preceding and following centuries the period 400-1200 CE in north-western France is characterised by a mixed forestry picture, with very old stands arising from the decline of the Roman Empire coexisting with very young coppices designed to meet the needs of wood-intensive activities. This era of silvicultural experiments is expressed in a wide variety of ways on high forest stands (HFS), coppice-with-standards (CWS) or hedgerows in the form of cyclic abrupt growth changes, browsing scars, distinctive tree silhouettes... The holistic dendroarchaeological approach provides indications for forest management and exploitation, adaptive strategies and failures and successes of a nascent silviculture and demonstrates an increasingly assertive customary framework for woodland utilisation, long before the first forestry regulations/rules that came into being in the thirteenth century.
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