A few points to preempt
@bobdroege7.
Selection of the sampling area.
It seems to be holy writ amongst the shroudies that the experts preparing for the radiocarbon dating argued for a hour or so and then decided on a site (to shroudies) completely unsuitable (mutter, invisible patch, mutter, mutter, cotton, muter, repairs.....) that anybody with the most casual acquaintance with the cloth (i.e. STURP who were annoyed at being mostly sidelined in favour of real scientists).
This tends to be part of their general attacks on "the scientists", but most of the blame is dumped on the "textile experts" who, although supposedly completely unfamiliar with the cloth (hint; they weren't) managed to persuade a number of people who should have known better, that this corner was the best place.
This doesn't actually address how they actually selected the corner, but the whole thing is generally attributed (mostly by Americans) to Italian incompetence. Perhaps because those who've pontificated at such length about the process either weren't there on 21APR1988 and/or didn’t speak Italian.
These various accounts (e.g. Sox, Wilson, et al) are contradictory and quite simply wromg.
The two experts were Franco Testore (Professor of Textile Technology at Turin), and Gabriel Vial (Professor at the Institut des Textiles de Lyon). Contraray to the shroudie lies neither of them were unfamiliar with the supposed shroud.
- Testore had been invited by Roberto Gonella who was Scientific Advisor to Cardinal Ballestrero of Turin, and Vial had been asked by Jacques Evin (from the radiocarbon centre in Lyons and Tite of the British Museum. He was also sampled with procuring appropriate control samples.
There are, in fact, detailed accounts of the proceedings but I shall not bore the members with them. Four hours were allocated, mainly due to the desire for the Archbishop to be present, but also because there was an idea to take a sample from the end of teh cloth folded under the second backing (the blue silk) where it might not be visible at all. This proved not to be possible
- In 1989, at a symposium in Paris, both Testore and Vial gave public explanations of the reasons for the selection of the Raes corner, which nobody queried.
After the radiocarbon sample had been cut both Testore and Vial made use of their access to the cloth to continue their examinations for the remainder of the day. Several papers resulted from this.
Now in all probability the Raes corner was going to be selected after it was found that there was insufficient cloth under the blue silk backing for the purpose. It was the logical place. But actually they weren't the people to first propose the sample should be taken from there; in 1984 STURP itself, in the form of Robert Dinegar and Garman Harbottle, proposed that region be used.
In turn, that was suggested in 1979 by......Harry Gove. Also of STURP.
Gove's suggestion (dated 19MAY1979) was accepted by STURP later that year anf approved by, Robert Dinegar, Raymond Rogers and David Sox.
In fact the group wanted to use the piece actually cut off by Raes in 1973.
All of which makes the later shroudie nonsense rather hypocritical.
Now the shroudies have various reasons who that corner was (supposedly) unsuitable. We've heard a lot of nonsense in this thread about a patch or reweave that was undetectable to the experts of 1988 (and today), rants about "obvious contamination" (that that edge of the cloth was commonly used to grip it when it was being held up to
help fleece the suckers allow the faithful to view the relic.
This was, by the way, the gospel according to Ray Schneider who, back in '14, produced some very dodgy stats to support this. Of course he failed to address, or mention, the cleaning procedures applied to the samples.
- Amusingly his 'clear gradient' calculations were the exact inverse of what he supposed. He also failed to address how grubby medieval fingers could have made the cloth appear older rather than younger...... Hence even hardcore shroudies don't like to mention him much, i case someone exposes his nonsense.
Our old friend Alan Adler also proposed two reasons, both equally spurious. Firstly he claimed the sampled area ("Only a single sample was taken in the lower corner of the main cloth of the frontal image below the so-called sidestrip from the selvage edge in an obviously waterstained area just a few inches from a burn mark").
Except the margin of the water staining doesn't touch the sampled area.... Ooops.
- Interestingly the 'riserva' section of the sample cut from the cloth (a bit cut off by not used by the radiocarbon efforts) is within the contamination, making something of a mockery of various later shroudie studies on it.
Now, on to Alder's "a few inches from a burn mark". Well we can forgive him for not using centimetres (he was a Yank after all) but Adler knew very well that no part of the Shroud is more than "a few inches from a burn mark". In fact if he'd bothered to check (for example, Aldo Guerreschi’s reconstruction of the way the cloth was folded during the 1532 fire, based on fold marks) he would have known damn well that the 'radiocarbon corner' was about as far from the main region of the scorching as it was possible to get.
Furthermore that area had been extensively studied by the 1973 commission, mainly by the Belgian textile expert Gilbert Raes. Now Raes made no mention of patches, repairs et cetera in the region, and, unlike the subsequent shroudies who claim patching/weaving/contamination,
had been able to study an actual piece of cloth rather than just snippets of thread, individual fibres.
Raes had found nothing controversial.
These objections and their variations are not , of course sensible reasons for not choosing that site. They are post hoc attempts to explain away the undesirable (to shroudies) results of that testing.
This bring up another matter, one I must confess I'd forgotten about until I recent refreshed my memories. Yes, I am falliable, I understand this will disappoint my fans here....
Most of the burns on the Lirey cloth, including those so beloved of enthusiasts of the Pray Codex, were caused by the 1532 fire in Chambery. The Pray Codex was created (probably) around 1195.
Obviously time travellers.