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View Full Version : Multispectral textile dating process


Patrick Weiler
October 7th, 2018, 07:49 AM
The article here shows some very old laundry being inspected using a novel technique: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/oct/04/imaging-tool-unravels-secrets-of-childs-sock-from-ancient-egypt?CMP=share_btn_ fb
The process is described here:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2 Fjournal.pone.020469 9
This was brought to my attention by Sue Richardson, married to David Richardson and authors of the book Qaraqalpaqs of the Aral Delta.
The upshot is a potential tool for dating textiles, including the possibility of applications on textiles of more recent origin than carbon dating is useful for. There would obviously need to be a tremendous amount of research done on currently accurately dated materials in order to generate a reasonably large database to allow it to be used for the objects of our interest.

Robert Ouellette
December 12th, 2018, 03:17 PM
Interesting technology Patrick. I'm surprised that the base imaging system they used is a Canon 40D. As a kid I worked in a scientific instrument plant (Simpson) that built flame photometers so the nondestructive nature of this process rings some cognitive bells for me. I wonder if there are some other applications of the process that could become "cloud" based?

Cheers