Tucson, 28 August 2012
After 74 years at the Arizona State Museum (ASM), a 10 ft. diameter section of the a giant sequoia is being moved to the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research’s new facility on the University of Arizona (UA) campus in Tuscon, Arizona.
Not on view at ASM since 1998, the main lobby of the new LTRR facility will display the 1,701-year-old section of human history. A gift from the Sequoia National Part in California, this slice belonged to a tree that began growing in 212 CE and fell in a storm in 1915. Sectioned for educational purposes, tree-ring researcher Dr. A. E. Douglass, undertook the acquisition of this rare objet for the UA in 1931, while other sections were sent to museums in Sweden and China.
“Douglass teamed with the archaeologist Emil Haury who was head of the Department of Anthropology and director of Arizona State Museum from 1938-64, to develop tree-ring chronologies that dated the occupation and abandonment of the great pueblos of the Southwest”, as stated in the press release.
Formally established on the UA campus in 1937, the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research has recently built a new facility thanks to donations by Mrs. Agnese Haury, wife of former LTRR director Dr. Bryant Bannister and has begun dismantling the section in order to move it to its new location.
The targeted move date from ASM to LTRR is sometime in late September or early October.