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The Effects of Possible Contamination on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls I: Castor Oil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Kaare L Rasmussen ,
Johannes van der Plicht ,
Frederick H Cryer ,
Gregory Doudna ,
Frank M Cross  and
John Strugnell
Kaare L Rasmussen
Affiliation:
Carbon-14 Dating Laboratory, National Museum of Denmark, Ny Vestergade 11, DK-1471 Copenhagen K, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected].
Johannes van der Plicht
Affiliation:
Centrum voor Isotopen Onderzoek, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen, the Netherlands
Frederick H Cryer
Affiliation:
Søndertoft 1, Kværs, DK-6300 Graasten, Denmark
Gregory Doudna
Affiliation:
1700 Marion Street, Clearwater, Florida 33756, USA
Frank M Cross
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
John Strugnell
Affiliation:
Divinity Avenue, Cambridge Massachusetts 02138, USA
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Abstract

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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
Notes and Technical Comments
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 127 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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