Re: The Vinland Map's Ink



Eric Stevens wrote:
>
> McCrone's discovery of anatase in the ink of the Vinland Map appears
> to provide an almost insurmountable hurdle for those who argue for the
> map's authenticity.

That statement is seriously faulty. It is no such thing - UNLESS inks
on a raft of other medieval documents from the same era are tested as
exhaustively as the VM has been. Till then, all we can say is anatase
is not unknown in the ink of other documents. There are no exhaustive
studies to compare it with to make the claims you have made.

> From shortly after the time when McCrone announced
> his discovery it has been suggested that the presence of anatase may
> be due to modern contamination, specifically shedding of chalking
> paint from rooms in which the map has been exposed. However, more
> recent discoveries as to the distribution of the anatase suggest that
> it is more concentrated in the ink than elsewhere and hence
> inconsistent with recent random contamination.
>
> In his book ?Erikson, Eskimos & Columbus, Mediaval European knowledge
> of America', James Rober Enterline [The John Hopkins University Press
> 2002, ISBN 0-8018-6660-X] includes an appendix on the subject of the
> ?Vinland Map's Ink'. According to a footnote this includes material
> presented by Enterline at the Seventh International Conference on the
> History of Cartography, Washington, D.C., and material posted to the
> ?Maphist' e-mail list on January 9 1997. Not withstanding this, his
> ideas do not seem to well known.
>
> While copyright precludes me from quoting the appendix in full, I am
> probably not stretching the bounds of fair use by quoting that section
> which explains how the VM may have become contaminated with anatase in
> the first place.
>
> Begin quote:
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> The major anomaly of the ink is, of course, the titanium white pigment
> particles that permeate the ink's binder. Might there be an
> explanation other than forgery for how they got into the ink? McCrone
> apparently never considered such a possibility. He himself stated that
> the pigments do not actually contribute anything to the pale
> yellow-brown color of the ink; the color is determined completely by
> the binder and/or impurities, and the white pigments seem purposeless.
> It is true that experimental titanium pigments of the 19205 did have
> impure colors that match this ink binder's color, but that fact could
> be a coincidence. The same color match could be obtained with
> innumerable other materials available to a forger. The first rule of
> good forgery has always been to use authentic materials. A forger
> otherwise good enough to have faked a Vinland Map should have obtained
> his color from an authentic material like tannin instead of an exotic
> titanium dioxide mixture. Therefore, one is moved to investigate the
> possibility of another hypothesis. Might it be possible that the map
> was originally titanium-free but the ink later became contaminated
> somehow with modern anatase titanium dioxide?
>
> Paleographers maintain that sometime in its recent past the document
> has been washed or cleaned with a chemical. That hypothesis is
> corroborated by the British Museum's microscopical examination of the
> parchment's wormholes. The examination focused on the wormhole lining
> that bookworms always leave. In this case the lining has apparently
> been removed by the action of some chemical agent.6
>
> A traditional way of cleaning documents was by bleaching. Nowadays
> conservators would be aghast at the idea of bleaching a parchment
> manuscript, but in the 1950s, when the Vinland Map was putatively
> still in private hands, it was common to "spruce up" antiquities to
> increase their sale value. The fact that the wormholes were patched
> shows that the owner held appearance above historical value. The bible
> of conservators at that time was the 1937 edition of Plenderleith,
> which advocated the same treatment for parchment manuscripts as for
> paper: regular household bleaching fluid,* sodium hypochlorite.7
>
> A hypothesis that the map was bleached is consistent with the
> appreciable elemental percentage of sodium in the analysis. Traces of
> sodium were found in the plain, uninked parchment areas and larger
> amounts of sodium were found in the ink itself. Sodium has no function
> in any known ink recipe nor, in such quantity, in any white pigments.
> Nor can it be accounted for as common salt, sodium chloride (NaC1),
> from perspiring fingers. Its ratio to the chlorine in the ink (2: 1
> by weight) combined with the fact that chlorine's atom is half again
> as heavy as sodium's rules out its occurrence with the formula NaC1.
> However, sodium hypochlorite bleach, NaOCl, as it decomposes releases
> gaseous chlorine, leaving the sodium free to combine with atmospheric
> CO2 and H20 and then to appear in the observed ratio to other
> elements.8
>
> Plenderleith described a bleaching method to be used on a document
> whose ink was unknown and possibly fugitive.9 The method avoids the
> more usual procedure of immersion in bleaching fluid. Instead, a piece
> of dry tissue paper is laid on the face of the document. Then one
> brushes liquid bleach onto this paper and lets it soak through,
> peeling away the tissue before drying occurs. Now, it has been
> asserted that an unidentified private family library was the I950s
> provenance of the Vinland Map,W and the kind of tissue paper a private
> family library would have on hand would be standard typewriter tissue.
> Its size would have been just perfect for insertion into this map's
> folio as it is bound with the Tartar Relation. However, in the 1940s
> and 1950s, some high-grade tissues, particularly onion skins and bible
> papers, were opacified with thin white coatings and fillers comprising
> exactly the pigments that were found in the ink'
>
> The coating or filler was held to the tissue by a binder of starch or
> casein. These are poorly soluble in water but are readily
> alkali-soluble. The alkaline pH level of commercial hypochlorite
> bleach would soften and loosen the binder of the paper pigments. i2 If
> the binder of the map ink were also alkali-soluble, then the viscid,
> pigment-laden paper coating would be in intimate contact with the
> viscid, pigment free map ink binder. The slightest mechanical
> agitation, as from a brush applying the bleach, would mix the pigments
> into the ink and even under the edges of the carbon flakes. Transfer
> would be enhanced by the washing action of the advancing wet front as
> well as by gravity. When the two vehicles were separated and dried,
> the particles that entered the ink binder would be retained and others
> on the bare parchment perhaps not.
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> End quote
>
> If Enterline is correct, the presence of anatase in or on the VM is
> the expected result of an attempt to bleach the map with the methods
> and materials recommended by Plenderleith, the authority of the time.
> Further, with our present state of knowledge, the presence of anatase
> can only be used as an argument against the authenticity of the VM if
> it can be shown that the distribution of the anatase is inconsistent
> with the bleaching technique recommended by Plenderleith.
>
> Where we are still woefully lacking in knowledge is the true nature of
> the VM map's ink. As far as I know we do not really have much idea of
> its composition or whether or not Enterline's suggestion that the
> binder of the ink may be alkali-soluble is correct. Until we can
> answer at least this question, it seems to me that Enterline's
> hypothesis must remain open as a viable explanation for the presence
> of anatase in the Vinland Map.

As potentially plausible as this seems to be there is one glaring
error in this theory - the variable quantity of the anatase on the
map. If the theory was the case, a far less variance of anatase qty
found would be expected. The whole theory also hinges on "if"
statement(s). Nor does the theory reason why the anatase would NOT
attach onto the bare parchment - a critical point to the theory.

--
SIR - Philosopher unauthorised
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The one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is
misled.
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