I wish I remembered better; maybe someone else will -- or you can google it. I'm running for my bus now.
I'd read that the Shroud does have middle-eastern pollen, quite possibly from ancient Israel.
The Shroud contains pollens from everywhere it has been... including places that it has NOT been since its revelation in that small wooden Chapel built by Geoffrey de Charnay in Lirey, France. Among these are pollens unique to the Jerusalem area, Sanli-Urfa (Edessa) in Turkey, and Istanbul (Constantinople). These are not defininitive because they could have been carried to the Shroud by dusty travelers.
A carbon-age dating, though, gave a date around 1400 A.D. Critics said that the date may have been inaccurate, because of some scorching of part of the Shroud, which might reset the carbon-age dating clock - or something like that.
Contrary to some wishful thinking, Fire does not alter the atomic isotope mix of the material burned. Nor would a sufficient quantity of 16th century wood smoke have infused the cloth of the Shroud to skew the dating so drastically. That does not mean, however, that the Carbon Dating is the final word on the authenticity of the Shroud. When ONE fact or test result says "A" and is in opposition to hundred or thousands of other facts and test results that say "B", one should question the reliability of that one test before tossing out the others.
The carbon dating was done in 1989 by three different laboratories and did come up with dates of 1233, 1238, 1326, and 1430(!) with a confidence of plus or minus 50 years. (The reason there are FOUR dates from THREE labs is that the Arizona Laboratory was given two samples.) Since these dates coincided so nicely with the skeptics viewpoint of a medieval origin, the news media trumpeted that the Shroud was a fake.
However, these dates were in cognitive dissonance with other facts known about the Shroud... for example a 10th century medallion with a representation of the Shroud showing the frontal and dorsal images... that Shroud scientists were astounded at the dates and began looking for reasons it was dated so young. The data from the dating had its own discrepancies... for example the Arizona Lab, arguably the most accurate of the three, showed results from its two samples that were at both extremes of the range: the 1430 and the 1233 datings. Not only were these at the extremes of the range, they were OUTSIDE of the +/- 50 year confidence for the tests... by a LOT.
Theories to account for the dates and the discrepancies ranged from fraud (someone switch samples) to the Shroud was irradiated by the resurrection to the scorch from the fire that damaged it in 1532 to bacteria and bacteria poop coating the fibers.
However, the theory that seems to have the most proof and evidence is that the portion of the Shroud where the C-14 samples were taken was a 16 Century invisible reweaving of a damaged area.
First of all, the sample was taken in violation of the established protocols which were changed unilaterally literally at the last hour. Instead of SEVEN samples from various areas of the Shroud, ONE was taken from the area the scientists had determined SHOULD NOT be sampled.
The sample itself was an 8 square centimeter strip cut from the end. This was reduced to 7 sq. cm because the sample contained "rogue fibers" with slightly different colors. One sq. cm was discarded as "contaminated." This should have raised HUGE red flags... but it didn't. This sample was then cut in half with half being retained as a control, and the other half spit among the three labs.
What went unnoticed in this sample taking is that the threads of the body of the shroud have a "Z" twist... but much of the sample threads have an "S" twist... just exactly opposite. In addition, the juncture between the threads ran diagonally through the half that was distributed to the labs... and the diagonally bifurcated portions of "Z" and "S" threads of each lab's sample is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE DATES REPORTED.
The latest research (on a previous thread on FreeRepublc) shows that Pyrolysis Mass Spectrometry conclusively proves that fibrils taken from an area adjacent to the 1989 sample are UNIQUE when compared fibrils taken from other areas of the Shroud. The Pyrolysis proved that the sample area fibrils contain a GUM coating not found on any other fibrils taken from the Shroud and that the Mass Spectrograph of the chemicals in the Shroud does not match those found in other areas, indicating a different strain of Flax may have been used to created the linen threads of the sampled area.
Other studies have demonstrated the reverse twist of the threads in the sample from one side to the other with a diagonal bifurcation, the existence of Cotton fibers in the sample are threads not found in other areas, the existence of "fullering" chemicals used in the 16th Century in the sampled area and not in other areas of the Shroud, and finally, the C-14 sample area fluoresces under a UV light and the rest of the Shroud does not.
I think the evidence is now overwhelming that the C-14 date was a dating of a combination of 16th Century Linen invisibly rewoven into the 1st Century Shroud. The math works out for the proportions in each sample of each lab to give the anomalous dates that seemed to fit the pre-conceived notions of the Skeptics.
The labs did accurate work with the sample(s) they were given... unfortunately, the breaking of protocol in taking that sample invalidates the entire test. We are almost back to square one.
I say almost because the C-14 testing DID provide some data... they did carbon date some original shroud material although it was unfortunately mixed with some 16th Century repair materials. We cannot know the EXACT proportions of each sample's mix but can estimate the proportions from the observed differences seen in the photos of the now destroyed in testing samples.
This does, however, come up with some interesting dates when you use the observed proportion in the mix of 16th Century materials and calculate for the unknown date of the original Shroud material. The date confidence is very wide because of the estimations, but the assuming all of the above, the Shroud material calculates out to sometime in the First Century AD (plus or minus a couple of centuries).