AMS And Its Impact On The Shroud Of Turin

Methods for measuring radiocarbon dates has developed significantly from the original solid-state Libby counter to the AMS (Wood 2015). Conventional radiocarbon dating methods count electrons emitted during beta decay, whereas an AMS detects the atomic weight and counts the number of radiocarbon atoms (Renfrew & Bahn 2012; Wood 2015; Strydonck 2016). Radiocarbon dating using an AMS became popular in the 1990s, however nuclear physicists first realised its potential in 1977 (Harris et al. 1987; Scott & Harkness 2000; Bayliss 2009; Kutschera 2013). Since its introduction the number of radiocarbon laboratories increased, thus reducing the cost of obtaining radiocarbon dates (Palincas 2017). Additionally, AMS reduced the size of samples from hundreds

Reducing the sample size greatly impacted archaeology, as it expanded the range of organic materials that could be dated and reduced the destruction of these materials (Harris et al. 1987; Renfrew & Bahn 2012). To elaborate on importance of AMS and its impact on archaeology a case study is presented on the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud of Turin is a piece of cloth with the image of a man’s body, which many Christians followers believed to have captured the real image of Jesus of Nazareth when he was wrapped in it after his crucifixion (Renfrew & Bahn 2012; Taylor 2017). In 1988, the Shroud of Turin underwent radiocarbon dating using AMS to determine its true age (Taylor 2017). Three AMS laboratories determined that the flax from which the linen was woven dated to the late 13th or 14th century and belonging to the medieval period (Taylor 2017). Additional expansions due to AMS include research into early domestication of plants, the spread of anatomically modern humans, and population of the New World (Bayliss 2009). Furthermore, reduction in the size of samples also allowed for the adoption of selective sampling techniques in the laboratory and in the field and encouraged multiple samples to be taken which informed on-site chronology consistency (Harris et