Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T21:56:51.261Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Experiment to Refute the Likelihood of Cellulose Carboxylation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

R. E. M. Hedges ,
Christopher Bronk Ramsey  and
G.-J. Van Klinken
R. E. M. Hedges
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology, 6 Keble Road Oxford, OX1 3QJ, United Kingdom
Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Affiliation:
Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology, 6 Keble Road Oxford, OX1 3QJ, United Kingdom
G.-J. Van Klinken
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Biogeochemie, Sophienstrasse 10, D-07743 Jena, Germany
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

To test the hypothesis that cellulose in linen can be carboxylated at high temperatures in the presence of CO2, water and silver, we heated two aliquots of cellulose extracted from old wood in glass ampoules, adding Ag powder to one to test its potential action as a catalyst for the carboxylation reaction. AMS measurement of the heated aliquots showed no statistically significant difference in 14C content from the “uncarboxylated” cellulose. We conclude that carboxylation is not a systematic source of error in the dating of cellulose-containing materials such as the linen in the Shroud of Turin.

Type
Part 1: Methods
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 40 , Issue 1: 16th International Radiocarbon Conference 16-20,1997 Groningen , 1997 , pp. 59 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The American Journal of Science 

References

Damon, P. E., Donahue, D. J., Gore, B. H., Hatheway, A. L., Jull, A. J. T., Linick, T. W., Sercel, P. J., Toolin, L. J., Bronk, C. R., Hall, E. T., Hedges, R. E. M., Housley, R., Law, I. A., Perry, C., Bonani, G., Trumbore, S., Woelfli, W., Ambers, J. C., Bowman, S. G. E., Leese, M. N. and Tite, M. S. 1989 Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Nature 337: 611–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jull, A. J. T., Donahue, D. J. and Damon, P. E. 1996 Factors affecting the apparent radiocarbon age of textiles. Journal of Archaeological Science 23: 157–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kousnetsov, D. A., Ivanov, A. A. and Yeletsky, P. R. 1996 Effects of fires and biofractionation of carbon isotopes on results of radiocarbon dating of old textiles: The Shroud of Turin. Journal of Archaeological Science 23: 109–122.Google Scholar