Numerous scholarly analyses of the Shroud of Turin have attempted to determine, using scientific methods, whether it is truly the burial garment of Jesus. In 1898 it was noticed that the sepia-tone images on the linen garment seem to have the characteristics of photographic negatives rather than positives. Beginning in the 1970s, tests were performed to see if these images were the result of paints or other pigments, scorches, or other agents. None of the tests proved conclusive. In 1988 carbon-14 dating tests on several postage-stamp-sized samples of the shroud concluded that its cloth was made sometime between 1260 and 1390, indicating it was inauthentic.
However, a 2022 study using wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) technology to analyze a small piece of the shroud suggested that the structural degradations of its cloth were compatible with those of a linen sample dated to 55–74 CE, bolstering the hypothesis that the shroud is from the time of Christ. (Environmental carbon contamination was suggested as the source of the discrepancy between those findings and the results of the carbon dating in the 1980s.) The study’s researchers made no claims regarding the shroud’s authenticity.