Wonder why they didn't recognize it as a patch in 1988.
> Wonder why they didn't recognize it as a patch in 1988.
Probably because the Shroud-fans didn't need the excuse yet.
Perhaps they though that an older result would have been obtained.
Why not do radiocarbon dating on the part now claimed to be "old"?
First they claimed there was pollen contamination. When that didn't pan out, they claimed there was smoke contamination. Now it's the invisible weaving patch. (It may be a patch though. One would have thought that this would have been noticed earlier.)
As usual, they will need more grant money to overcome this controversy. Of course, there's a scenario that the main piece is actually older and the "forger seamstress" got ahold of something older to make the patch.
And define "older". Ten years, one hundred years? No matter how you "cut it", the goal is GRANT MONEY. No one really wants a solution.
"expertly rewoven" and they were not expecting a patch.
The Shroud of Turin is a large piece of linen that shows the faint image of a man on its surface. Many people believe it is the burial cloth of Jesus, making it extremely controversial. Radiocarbon ages were determined in 1988 [1], which should have settled controversies as to the age of the linen. The 1988 radiocarbon age determinations were the best that could have been obtained. Sample preparation methods were compared and confirmed, and the measurements were made with the best available instruments. Damon et al. reported [1] that “The age of the shroud is obtained as A.D. 1260–1390, with at least 95% confidence.” However, that date does not agree with observations on the linen-production technology nor the chemistry of fibers obtained directly from the main part of the cloth in 1978 [2] and [3]. The 1988 sampling operation was described in [1]: “The shroud was separated from the backing cloth along its bottom left-hand edge and a strip (
10 mm × 70 mm) was cut from just above the place where a sample was previously removed in 1973 for examination. The strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas.” Franco Testore, professor of textile technology at the Turin Polytechnic, and Gabriel Vial, curator of the Ancient Textile Museum, Lyon, France, approved the location of the radiocarbon sample.
Reweaving is a lost art. Nobody has time for that anymore although 200 years ago it was common.
It is an excellent repair job. The repair was done using a French technique of invisible reweaving. However, the sample was taken from the one area ALL the scientists agreed should not be sampled because of known repairs in that area. The agreed protocol was literally changed at the last hour.
It wasn't a patch. It was rewoven. I have a friend who does reweaving. It's impossible to tell from looking at it has been repaired. I'm guessing that the nuns of the 11th or 12th century were really really good at doing this.