Re: VMs: new here

["Lukas Palatinus" <palat@xxxxxx>]

Hi,
>    It seems VMs was not carbon dated, with the usual reason given,
>    that in the time period in question the method would not be 
precise
>    enough to supply any meaningful information.

Actually the even more usual reason given is that carbon dating of 
the vellum says nothing about the time of writing of the text on the 
vellum. "Recycling" the vellum was quite frequent in those days and 
even if VMs were a hoax, the author would most probably have taken 
care to use an old vellum to make the hoax look credible. In summary, 
the probability of getting some useful information from carbon dating 
of the vellum is too low for anybody to bother. 
Btw. if VMs is really 500 years old, then 14C could produce 
relatively good results. For samples older than 1950, the quality of 
the results is limited (more or less) just by the accuracy of the 
analytical methods(and calibration curve, which is quite well known 
for the tie periods we are talking about). IMHO accuracy of +-40 
years is achievable.
More interesting than the vellum is the ink and/or possible pigments 
with organic admixture (if such pigments were used in VMs). However, 
it is probably out of question to take sufficiently large samples of 
pigments (several mg for modern methods) from the original. :-(

Lukas

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