Identify historical Paper Fibers to Dating Feasibility of Unknown Samples

Historical papers with all museum and aesthetic value have considerable cultural and scientific importance which represents how societies were during history improved. Studying historical papers is a way to discover the changes of human’s life in different cases such as economics, culture and politics. Between existing manuscripts prescriptions there are some, which are left unseen unfortunately due to lack of recognition of their writing date. So to understand their originality, we require technical and structural analyses. Quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis and identification of organic paper are able to recognize their structure and thus the probable time of the paper making process or use it as a cultural work.
Today, using scientifically exact methods like radiocarbon dating of organic material such as dating paper results well. Unfortunately, it is impossible to use this method in our country because of high cost and lack of access for most of experts. In this research we seek to know the most used materials in a specific era and to make possible the indirect dating by studying and recognizing fibers and sizing in historical papers. We have used microscopic observations, color reagents and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) methods. Results showed that linen, and hemp fibers have a high level of application in studied dated manuscripts and there is conformity in these results with results of studied undated ones.