This is another session that I tweeted (@taradkennedy), so not a long post, but enough to give you the gist at least.
Ms. Goler was using micro-Raman spectroscopy for dating of Egyptian manuscript material.This is super cool because normally we’d have to take a sample of a manuscript and do carbon dating in order to determine a date of an unknown. With this method, we don’t!
So, how does it work? Essentially measurements are taken of the carbon black ink on a particular manuscript using micro-Raman spectroscopy. Using the difference in the dominant peak heights in the spectrograph with ink samples where the date is known, ratios are plotted and graphed to show dates:
So, the more plots you have, the more dates you have; and the more dates you have, the easier it is to determine the date range of an unknown manuscript.
To test that this would work, Ms. Goler analyzed a manuscript where she didn’t know the date range, but the librarian/ curator did. Using this method, she was able to date the manuscript within a 70 year range!
It was nondestructive in that the energy level of the laser used didn’t “burn up” the ink sample. One of the issues that a conservator from the University of Michigan else mentioned during the Q&A portion was that in order to get the peak response that Ms. Goler got, she would destroy the sample. Since my experience with Raman spectroscopy is zero, I can’t really speculate why Ms. Goler was successful and this other woman from U of M was not.
I did think this is a really promising technique, provided I understood the content correctly. If people have edits or corrections, be sure to comment below!
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation