Ages to mould bronze items that needed a high level of rigidity, such as bells and cannons. Carruba argues, like Braun, that the damage to the wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process. In addition, La Regina, former superintendent of Rome's archaeological heritage, argues that the sculpture's artistic style is more akin to Carolingian and Romanesque art than that of the ancient world. Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating were carried out at the University of Salento in February 2007 to resolve the question. The results revealed with an accuracy of 95.4% that the sculpture was crafted between the 11th and 12th centuries AD. A 2019 radiocarbon study, based on organic residues in the casting cores recovered from the inner part of the statue, "firmly anchor[s] the statue to the XI-XII centuries CE, in the Middle Ages." However, a recent study by John Osborne at the British School at Rome concluded that the radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates were totally inconsistent. He pointed out that metal from which the wolf is made is of the Etruscan type using copper from Sardinia and that there is no sign of the adulteration common in mediaeval times, and that on the balance of probabilities, the wolf should be considered to be Etruscan. History of the sculpture When the sculpture was first erected it is unclear, but a number of mediaeval references mention a "wolf" standing in the Pope's Lateran Palace. In the 10th-century Chronicon of Benedict of Soracte, the monk chronicler writes of the institution of a supreme court of justice "in the Lateran Palace, in the place called the Wolf, viz, the mother of the Romans." Trials and executions "at the Wolf" are recorded from time to time until 1438. The 12th-century English cleric Magister Gregorius wrote a descriptive essay De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae and recorded in an appendix three pieces of sculpture he had neglected; one was the wolf in the portico, at the principal entrance to the Lateran Palace. He mentions no twins, for he noted that she was set up as if stalking a bronze ram that was nearby, which served as a fountain. The wolf had also served as a fountain, Magister Gregorius thought, but it had been broken off at the feet and moved to where he saw it. The present-day Capitoline Wolf could not have been the sculpture seen by Benedict and Gregorius, if its