Has carbon dating of The Dead Sea Scrolls ever been performed?

by rootboyslim
QuickSpore

Yes.

Material that was found with them were one of the first things ever dated by Willard Libby, the inventor of carbon dating. He dated some linen found in the caves with the scrolls. At the time the amount of material needed to properly date something was quite large so he initially didn't date any of the scrolls directly. By the 1960s Libby had improved the process sufficiently he tested one scroll directly.

That was it for a few decades. Then in the 1990s several rounds of testing were done in both Europe and the US on roughly two dozen fragments. Each test of course provides a range of dates rather than a specific date. And the various scrolls seem to cover several centuries. The oldest item comes from around 400-200 BCE. The youngest comes from around 300-320 CE.