Abstract
The Shroud of Turin is a long, narrow strip of linen cloth believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus. The Shroud is unique because faint images of a crucified man are clearly visible on one surface. These body images along with accompanying blood stains have been the subject of scientific inquiry for over a hundred years, yet the process of the image formation has been and remains unknown. Among the more recent of coordinated studies of the Shroud was a radiocarbon dating of excised samples. The results, published in 1989, place the origin of the cloth to sometime in or around the 14th century. The objective of the present study is to survey the cleaning methods (or pretreatments) that were applied to the samples removed for the radiocarbon study. Specifically, we explore the extent to which these methods may have given rise to a peculiar structure in the raw radiocarbon data published in 2019. The data from two of the participating laboratories, Zurich and Arizona, appear to bifurcate into groups separated by roughly 100 radiocarbon years. By comparing the pretreatment for each subsample and its group membership, we conclude that these pretreatments do not account for the bifurcation effect. As all subsamples represent portions excised from an originally intact and continuous sample of Shroud material, we assume they are all the same calendar age. Granted this assumption and given the results of the present study, two hypotheses remain to account for the curious anomaly: either 1) the carbon isotope ratios 14C/12C of the fabric itself were altered by some currently unknown process, or 2) a non-isotropic distribution of contamination remained after the samples underwent the documented pretreatments. A resolution of the question is important for deciding whether future radiocarbon studies are called for and, if so, how the testing protocols should be structured.
Highlights
The Shroud of Turin is a rectangular strip of linen cloth (4.4 m x 1.1 m) bearing on one surface the head-to-head, dorsal and ventral images of a man apparently crucified
Besides whatever implications our results have for the composition of the tested Shroud samples, we hope that our findings prove useful in the specifications of cleaning protocols should a future program of radiocarbon testing be undertaken
We review the radiocarbon data that were collected by the laboratories participating in the 1989 study of the Shroud of Turin and originally submitted to the British Museum for analysis and compilation
Summary
The Shroud of Turin is a rectangular strip of linen cloth (4.4 m x 1.1 m) bearing on one surface the head-to-head, dorsal and ventral images of a man apparently crucified. Some revere the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus; others consider it a manufactured article with only historical significance. Curious persons from both groups have pondered the nature of the images, how they came to be, and the origin of the Shroud and its subsequent history. In 1898, Secondo Pia, a Turinese photographer, produced the first high-quality photographic image of the face. This event marked the beginning of a series of largely uncoordinated observational and empirical studies that followed over the 70 years. To our knowledge none of this work appeared in the more widely available scientific literature
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