Forensic analytical approaches to the dating of documents: An overview

Abstract Document dating is one of the most challenging areas in the field of questioned document examination. Determination of age of document becomes of prime importance in the cases involving the document having historical value, or the document in question bearing a date, that is disputed. The dating of documents can be done by focusing on different aspects of a document, i.e., dating through paper, through inks, through a sequence of intersecting lines, through handwriting, etc. This article furnishes a broad overview of the dating documents techniques and instruments based on the various methods and their possible applications and limitations. The document dating may be performed using either or a combination of static, dynamic and supplementary approaches. The static approach includes time tags, chemical composition, elemental profiling. The dynamic approach includes ink, paper and toner ageing. The supplementary methods comprise accelerated ageing techniques, chemometric approaches, constructing the chronology of documents, analyzing luminescent components, radiocarbon dating and nanotechnology-based approaches. This article brings to fore the utilization of the different facets of the document for dating purposes. It presents the summarized form of the different methods and techniques, including some less focused ones.