Volumes of Worth—delimiting the Sample Size for Radiocarbon Dating of Parchment

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9242579
AutoresTuuli Kasso (0000-0002-9652-9093), Markku Oinonen (0000-0002-0881-7643), Kenichiro Mizohata (0000-0003-1703-2247), Jaakko K Tahkokallio, Tuomas M Heikkilä
Año2021
Volumen63
Número1
Páginas105-120
Fecha de publicación2021-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaRadiocarbon (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0033-8222 • E-ISSN: 1945-5755
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/rdc.2020.128
OpenAlexW3111199715
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas18

Medieval manuscripts are invaluable archives of the written history of our past. Manuscripts can be dated and localized paleographically, but this method has its limitations. The Fragmenta membranea manuscript collection at the National Library of Finland has proved difficult to date using paleographic methods. Radiocarbon dating has been applied to manuscripts of parchment before, but a systematic protocol for radiocarbon dating of parchment has not been established with a minimally destructive sampling strategy. In this work, we have established a radiocarbon dating procedure for parchments combining a clean-room based chemical pretreatment process, elemental analyzer combustion, automatic graphitization and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurements to reduce the AMS target size from a typical 1 mg of carbon. Prolonged acid treatment resulted in improved dating accuracy, since this is consistent with the manufacturing process of medieval parchment involving a lime bath. Two different combustion processes were compared. The traditional closed tube combustion (CTC) method provided a well-established though labor-intensive way to produce 1 mg AMS targets. The Elemental Analyzer-based process (EA-HASE, Elemental Analyzer Helsinki Adaptive Sample prEparation line), is designed for fast combustion and smaller sample sizes. The EA-HASE process was capable of reproducing the simulated radiocarbon ages of known-age samples with AMS graphite target sizes of 0.3 mg of carbon, corresponding to a 3 mm 2 area of a typical medieval parchment. The full potential of the process to go down to as little as 50 μg will be further explored in the future in parallel to studies of sample-specific contamination issues

Accelerator mass spectrometry · Archaeology · Combustion · Parchment · Radiocarbon dating · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Chemistry · Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis · History · Isotope Analysis in Ecology