ARCE's Illinois Chapter Lecture
"Assessing the Gospel Truth: New Tools for Ancient Artifact Analysis"
Joseph G. Barabe
Barabe & Associates LLC
Saturday
March 2, 2019
5:00 PM
LaSalle Banks Room of the Oriental Institute
The analysis of cultural artifacts such as historical objects, documents, and works of art has a long history. Today, a large number of analytical techniques, some of long standing and many recently developed, are available to help scholars investigate the materials of a bygone age and, in many cases, assess their authenticity. The choice of a technique is governed by a number of often competing factors, including the availability of expertise and instrumentation, costs, and the rarity and condition of the object. Some techniques require collection of a sample of the material – not always possible in objects of high value – whereas many can be employed non-destructively. This mostly minimum-technical talk will explore a number of important analytical techniques based on the kinds of information they provide, their limitations, their costs, and their appropriateness. A number of case studies will be presented, including a purported ancient Bible manuscript (the University of Chicago’s Archaic Mark), with special emphasis on the analysis of the ink on the Gospel of Judas, a purported 3rd century CE Egyptian document.
Joseph G. Barabe received his BA at Michigan State University and was a medical photographer at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. He studied art materials analysis under the mentorship of Dr. Walter C. McCrone at the McCrone Research Institute, and chemistry under Professor Bill Mikuska at Triton College. He was employed at McCrone Associates in Westmont IL as Director of Scientific Imaging and Senior Research Microscopist for 24 years, until retiring in 2013 and establishing his own consulting firm, Barabe & Associates LLC, specializing in the analysis of art materials, historical artifacts and documents.
