UPDATED: Values for measurements by Giulio Fanti have been added.
Something else is strange about the sample Jull used in his recent paper in Radiocarbon. Notice that other researchers found higher warp thread counts than weft counts. And the counts were very similar. Jull found the opposite. Did he confuse warp with weft? We have to wonder. Or is this NOT a piece of cloth from the Shroud of Turin?
Indeed, it may not be part of the Shroud because the fragment also seems to be a 2-over-1 twill fragment rather than a 3-over-1 fragment, which is what we would get from the Shroud.
Does the Jull paper produce any useful information at all? Does Jull not realize that there are problems that need to be addressed?
The textile examined by Freer and Jull is a 3/1 twill, as can be seen from photographs in this video of the Arizona State Museum:
http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/podcasts/ep033_beyond_naked_eye.shtml
See at minute 02.31 (warp side) and 01.23 (weft side). Other images are from minute 11.30. In all these photos, the warp threads run horizontally, as can be deduced from the inclination of the diagonals of the herringbone twill. From these photos it is easy to count the warp and weft threads. From the bar equivalent to 1 mm as shown with the first two photos, we may estimate that the dimensions of the rectangle are about 6 by 8/9 mm. Then it is easy to verify that the numbers of warp and weft threads per centimeter are just those to be expected from the known measurements by Vercelli and others. The values as given by Freer and Jull are completely wrong. Probably they have mistaken the warp for the weft. This is a serious mistake because it is well known that in the Shroud (and also, as a rule, in most ancient textiles) the warp threads are more dense than the weft threads. This is also immediately evident if only one looks at the inclination of the herringbone diagonals, which form an angle of less than 45 degrees with the warp direction.
Miss Freer (or Mrs Freer-Waters after her recent marriage) did this work in 2008 while she was at the Museum with a one year fellowship. She was very young (you may see her photo in the same video at minute 00.24) and had just earned a MS in 2007 from the University of Rhode Island. For her current activity, you may see her website:
http://www.textileanalysisandconservation.com/
@Gain: Look at the picture two posts down. That is not 3/1 twill. That is not from the shroud.
a moment: the threads count was made by Freer-Waters or by textile expert Ann Edlund? or by both?
Gian Marco Rinaldi is a mathematician but he seems to know the textile topic better.
anyway: and the peer review process?