(28-08-2026, 09:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Averaging the results (that is, treating all samples as samples of the same object) is appropriate if one assumes that all the bifolios were produced within a short period of a couple of years.
But the C14 data does not tell us that. We know that the vellum comes from at least 10 different animals. The Author possibly, if not probably, procured vellum from merchants or other sources (like the rejects box of monasteries and other vellum users) that could have stocked and mixed skins of arbitrary ages. Therefore the assumption above cannot be made. The proper way to present the results is by listing the individual probability distributions, not by averaging the results.
I still see no problem with the conclusions in the radiocarbon dating report. The most likely range for the creation of the set of folios that have been tested is ~1404-1435. Other possibilities are considerably less likely. If the parchment was produced over the course of 50+ years, it appears a very strange coincidence that all tested folios cluster in the range that maps both to the peak of ~1340 and to the upslope of ~1420 and none of them appear in the trove of ~1375 where they would immediately stand out and it would be a certainty that the parchment was not all from the same period. So, while it's possible that untested folios were created earlier or later, the four tested folios are most likely from the range specified in the report.
Overall, I'm not sure why this is so important. As you said yourself, any later date is certainly possible, especially given the poor quality of the vellum I can imagine someone sourcing old scraps unused for 50+ years, on the other hand if the manuscript is a copy, the original could be from any date preceding 1300s. Maybe the very things that the visual analysis is based on, like dress styles, were modified when copying.