A short article in todays Times quotes William Cowley parchment makers as saying velum provides the only foolproof way for detecting art forgery. Very simply an artist creates their work on vellum and retains a sample for genetic comparison should a suspected forgery come to light later on. The UK Parliament has been recording acts of Parliament on vellum since at least the 1849, but this ceased in 2016 to save £80,000 – probably part of the Tory austerity drive!
Others have reported on how analysis of the vellum used in historical documents might shed light on the breeding history of domesticated animals before the emergence of the dominant commercial breeds of today. These manuscripts could be an untapped resource since many millions of records are locked away in libraries and both academic and private collections. I can’t imagine how much DNA is stored in the University of Cambridge library!
See: Paging through history: parchment as a reservoir of ancient DNA for next generation sequencing.
I’m not aware of any journals offering a vellum copy of your submitted paper, but perhaps this could be an option?
Leave A Comment