Turin Shroud
General Description
The cloth
It is a single piece of linen cloth measuring about 14 feet by 3½ feet. The weave is a 3 over 1 herringbone weave. It is bloodstained and shows faint and ventral and dorsal images of a man who, by the wounds that are visible, appears to have been crucified. He seems to be burial repose.
The bloodstains
The bloodstains are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin. Numerous tests confirm this.
The images
The images are superficial and fully contained within a thin layer of starch fractions and saccharides that coats the outermost fibers of the cloths. The coloration is a caramel-like product or the product of an amino/carbonyl reaction. Where there is no image, the carbohydrate coating is clear. There is also a very faint image of the face on the reverse side of the cloth which lines up with the image on the front of the cloth. There is no image content between the two superficial image layers indicating that nothing soaked through to form the image on the other side.
Until recently, it was widely believed that the images were produced by something which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the fibers of the linen itself. This has been shown to be incorrect. The coating, whether imaged or clear, can be reduced with diimide or removed with adhesive leaving clear cellulose fiber.
The images are said to be negative because when photographed the resulting negative is a positive image.
The Turin Shroud was examined with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, thermography, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, lasermicroprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing. No evidence for pigments (paint, dye or stains) or artist's media was found.
Carbon 14 testing
In 1988, C14 testing seemed to indicate that the cloth was medieval; that it was produced between about 1260 and 1390. However, new examination of the area from which the samples were cut reveals a splice site with twisted-in cotton fiber and madder root dyestuff suggesting that the site was a patch or repair to the Shroud. Neither the dye nor the mordants for the dye are found elsewhere on the Shroud. Nor is cotton fiber found elsewhere as a component of the linen thread. The carbon 14 site and the rest of the cloth are chemically different. This invalidates the carbon 14 tests.
Furthermore, recent lignin decomposition kinetic studies show that the cloth is at least twice as old as the carbon 14 tests had suggested.
© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
