On oxidative degradation of parchment and its non-destructive characterisation and dating

Abstract

Historic parchment is an extremely complex ma- terial, not only due to the various methods of production used and various past environmental histories of objects, but also due to its inhomogeneous structure. Many traditional methods of characterisation are empirical, but useful since they have gained recognition by the end-users. In this pa- per, we investigated the shrinkage temperature of collagen and the influence of lipids contained in parchment on the measurements. While the content of lipids does not seem to significantly affect shrinkage temperature measurements themselves, it strongly affects the decrease of shrinkage tem- perature of collagen during degradation, and thus its thermo- mechanical properties. This confirms the high importance of lipid peroxidation during degradation of parchment. While shrinkage temperature determination is a micro- destructive method, we also demonstrated that it is possible