Science, conflict and the devotional artifact: A social cartography of the Turin shroud controversy

This dissertation comprises an historical case study of a scientific controversy concerning the provenance, authenticity and material attributes of a Catholic devotional artifact known as the Shroud of Turin, an ancient linen burial cloth imprinted with a faint image of a man who bears the marks of a Roman crucifixion. Beginning with an account of a 1978 scientific inquiry into the shroud carried out by a team of American scientists, this project traces the charged epistemic disputes that unfolded among scientific and nonscientific actors over the question of the shroud's historical status, which endured for years following the inquiry. It is argued here that scientific disputes concerning a devotional artifact lend distinctive insights into how we might comprehend the conditions underlying epistemic conflict, the agential role of material objects in configuring and circumscribing controversy, and the reasons why closure in controversy is complicated by scientists' reverence to the socio-material ambiguities of the devotional artifact itself. It is further argued that the epistemic and political disputes among shroud scientists were compelled by contenders' commitment to both the instrumental and intrinsic value of imparting a credible scientific narrative of the Turin shroud for the broader social milieu.