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Microscale radiocarbon dating of paintings

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Abstract

In this paper, radiocarbon dating of paintings using minimal sample sizes has been investigated, in an effort to address the problem of limited access to sample material in paintings. 14C analyses were conducted on signed and dated paintings from two Swiss artists of the twentieth century. The selected paintings dated from the 1930s and 1960s, provided the opportunity to evaluate the dating accuracy on paintings realized before and after 1950 AD when the 14C bomb peak was created, as a result of the nuclear tests conducted in the 1950/1960s. The work focused on the one hand on minimizing the size of the canvas sample required for accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon measurement on the gas ion source of the MICADAS and, on the other hand, on testing the possibility of dating the organic binder of the paint. Following careful characterization of the paint composition by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, paints containing no other carbon source than the natural organic binder were identified and dated.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA) for kindly providing the paintings to be dated. Montana Mauer is to be thanked for her help in preparing the gas targets. Thanks to Simon Fahrni and Lukas Wacker for their advice on running gas measurements on the GIS of the MICADAS. We wish to acknowledge Phillip Hitz for the professional photographies of the paintings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zurich, Otto-Stern-Weg 5, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland

    Laura Hendriks, Irka Hajdas & Cameron McIntyre

  2. SIK-ISEA, Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 32, 8032, Zurich, Switzerland

    Markus Küffner & Ester S. B. Ferreira

  3. HKB, Bern University of Applied Sciences, Fellerstr. 11, 3027, Bern, Switzerland

    Nadim C. Scherrer

Authors
  1. Laura Hendriks
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  2. Irka Hajdas
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  3. Cameron McIntyre
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  4. Markus Küffner
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  5. Nadim C. Scherrer
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  6. Ester S. B. Ferreira
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Correspondence to Ester S. B. Ferreira.

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Hendriks, L., Hajdas, I., McIntyre, C. et al. Microscale radiocarbon dating of paintings. Appl. Phys. A 122, 167 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-016-9593-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-016-9593-x

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