The Effects of Possible Contamination on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls I: Castor Oil
Author
Rasmussen, Kaare L.van der Plicht, Johannes
Cryer, Frederick H.
Doudna, Gregory
Cross, Frank M.
Strugnell, John
Issue Date
2001-01-01Keywords
castor oilDead Sea Scrolls
isotope ratios
Holocene
experimental studies
sample preparation
Cenozoic
Quaternary
methods
C 14
carbon
isotopes
radioactive isotopes
C 13 C 12
stable isotopes
absolute age
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Rasmussen, K. L., van der Plicht, J., Cryer, F. H., Doudna, G., Cross, F. M., & Strugnell, J. (2001). The effects of possible contamination on the radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls I: Castor oil. Radiocarbon, 43(1), 127-132.Journal
RadiocarbonAdditional Links
http://radiocarbon.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/Abstract
Some fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts were contaminated with castor oil in the late 1950s. We have conducted experiments in order to establish if the AAA pretreatment cleaning procedures conducted on Dead Sea Scroll manuscript samples in the last two dating series (Bonani et al. 1992; Jull et al. 1995) were effective in removing oil contamination. Our experiments show that not all oil contamination can be expected to have been removed by the acid-alkaline-acid (AAA) pretreatment, and that the radiocarbon ages previously reported therefore cannot be guaranteed to be correct. Any samples contaminated with castor oil were most likely reported with ages that are too young by an unknown amount.Type
Articletext
Language
enISSN
0033-8222ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1017/S0033822200031702