Abstract The age of a relatively old document is one of the pending issues to be resolved in the field of forensic documentary examination. Although nowadays there are a variety of analytical methodologies focused in the analysis of inks for dating documents, the paper analysis has attained little attention. This work aims to develop two complementary approaches for estimating the age of documents based on paper analysis employing the pyrolysis technique coupled to gas chromatography with detection by mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS): (i) a direct approach using the pyrolytic fingerprints and multivariate regression with artificially aged samples, and (ii) an indirect approach based on the identification of compounds characteristic of the document period. The direct approach has successfully allowed the age estimation of relatively old documents under police custody (up to 30 years of age) and the determination of a relation between the natural and the accelerated aging of paper under the used conditions. This approach is applicable to papers that have the same (or similar) composition and have been stored under comparable storage conditions. Additionally, the indirect approach is presented as an interesting perspective to ratify valuable information of the document age.

中文翻译：

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基于 Py-GC/MS 纸张分析的直接和间接方法，用于估计文件的年龄

摘要 较旧文件的年代是法医文书检验领域亟待解决的问题之一。虽然现在有多种分析方法专注于分析约会文件的墨水，但纸张分析很少受到关注。这项工作旨在开发两种互补的方法来估计文件的年龄，基于纸质分析，采用热解技术与气相色谱结合质谱检测 (Py-GC/MS)：(i) 使用热解指纹的直接方法和使用人工老化样本进行多元回归，以及 (ii) 基于文件时期特征化合物识别的间接方法。直接方法已成功地允许对警察保管下的相对较旧的文件（最多 30 年）进行年龄估计，并确定在使用条件下纸张的自然老化和加速老化之间的关系。此方法适用于具有相同（或相似）成分并已在可比存储条件下存储的纸张。此外，间接方法被提出作为一个有趣的视角来批准文档时代的有价值信息。