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Recent Archaeological Discoveries (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Hatty
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The word among Egyptologists is the Nefertiti bust "has not been authenticated". The problems are twofold -- stylistic and provenance -- and at least two books recently claimed the bust is inauthentic. The pigments used are said to be authentic though doubts remain over the plaster which apparently can't be dated.

Someone with a Ph.D in Egyptology posted online that he had been unable to track down any export record and carries on to make a pretty convincing case for forgery.

On provenance

Contrary to what people think, these things have to be recorded. Even in war time, the soldiers have to record what they were taking where the governments permit them to loot. The bust has no history. What I mean by this, is for most artifacts to be considered valid, they basically have to look right, feel right, and seem right, and have a history of the moment they were removed from the ground, until now. Anything less, means it cannot be authenticated to the best ability of archaeologist. Now sometimes if it is consistent with other styles in a perfect manner, we can say it is most probable but has a missing history. The bust meets neither of these requirements, it is inconsistent with Egyptian style of its time, you cannot find another bust like it Ancient Egypt, additionally it doesn't appear in any record, export record, military record nor import record. In other words, it first appears in Germany not Egypt, according to the record. This makes it impossible to authenticate as Egyptian.


On the first finder:

Borchardt (the guy who first has the bust), was, unethical at best, but had a reputation as a forger and a reputation for buying fakes and making fakes and trying to pass them off as real. Additionally we know for a fact other parts in support of the bust are certainly fake, we know because...

"The renowned Egyptologist Rolf Krauss, a curator at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin for more than 20 years and the custodian of the Nefertiti bust, claims that the folding altar used as compensation for the bust was fake.

Krauss theorizes that Borchardt, consumed with ambition, had the magnificent panel, with which he enticed Lefebvre, made by skilled stonemasons in Cairo. But could the excavator have been capable of such contemptuous fraud? Some, who believe Borchardt was a hatchet man, say he could.

It is true that the scholar had been working at the German consulate general in Cairo since 1899. His official title was "academic attaché." But in reality Borchardt's job -- in the struggle against the other imperialistic powers, England, France and the United States -- was to fill Germany's museums with treasures from the days of the pharaohs.

His approach was often crude. In 1908, British Egyptologist Alan Gardiner accused him of "tactless and brusque behavior." Gardiner also claimed that the German had established a network of academic spies in the Nile Valley.

When confronted at home, the accused admitted that he had illegitimately acquired "a large number of photographs, drawings, private letters and foreign documents, and so on." In a letter to the foreign ministry, a colleague complained that a man who had "compromised German academia in such a way cannot remain in his position."

But the Indiana Jones of the German Empire survived the scandal. He was simply too good at what did. Borchardt often roamed through the souks of Cairo, where bearded merchants offered stolen antiquities for sale, as well as fakes made to look old with etching acid. Borchardt himself described the dealers' tricks. For example, it was common that "the men scratch off old paint, crush it and apply it with a binding agent."

There is even evidence that Borchardt made forgeries himself when he was a student. He imitated a cuneiform tablet and wrote logarithms onto it. A scholar fell for the practical joke.



Plenty more in this vein https://www.quora.com/Is-the-bust-of-Nefertiti-a-forgery
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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The pigments used are said to be authentic


That is really just saying the pigments are either organic or mineral based, ie not a modern chemical copy.
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Mick Harper
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But they have to be pre-1945 because of the radiation-from-bomb-tests factor.
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Mick Harper
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I'm not an Egypt buff myself but this may be of interest to those that are
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/giza-plateau-0010702?utm_source=sumome&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sumome_share
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Mick Harper
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A good illustration of the uses and abuses of archaeology last night from the ever-wondrous Alice Roberts. It was a digging-up-a-Spitfire story. First, let's correct the history. The Spitfire in question was not

on a highly dangerous, secret mission, ordered by Winston Churchill

It was on a completely routine recce of the Norwegian coast, one of the safer ways of flying a Spitfire in 1942. And to say

it was a mission he [Flt Lt Alastair Gunn] would not return from alive

is a rather ingenuous way of saying he was shot down, taken off to a POW camp and later shot for participating in the Great Escape. But it's the archaeology angle I'm concerned with. This mark of Spitfire was as common as muck -- even the photo reconnaissance variant is numbered in the hundreds -- so we know everything that can be known about it from physical specimens, blue prints and half a hundred other historical documents.

So why the need for an expedition to Norway to dig this particular one up? None whatsoever. Now I have no objection at all to enthusiasts doing just that but to call it archaeology and give it ten minutes of archaeological prime time is an abuse of process by any standard. Or perhaps I'm just getting grumpy.
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Hatty
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Wiltshire Museum has been tweeting about a 2012-13 dig at Barrow Clump, a few miles north of Amesbury in Wiltshire, and announced they've got a find from the dig... ‘a rare Saxon bucket’

Wiltshire Museum tweeting Wessex Archaeology
The bucket is on display in our Saxon Gallery! This item is an Anglo-Saxon drinking vessel (or bucket), which was excavated by Rowan Kendrick (The Rifles) in 2012. The amount of surviving wood is unusual; and while excavation and conservation were challenging, this is a fascinating and valuable find.



I wondered why the wooden bucket is in such good nick. Because, the Museum replied pithily

Mineralisation from the Iron spearhead placed on top replaced the cellulose in the wood.


But, I pointed out, iron is not dateable so wouldn't iron mineralisation affect their ability to date the underlying wood (yew, in this case)?

Wiltshire Museum:
Yes - unlikely to be enough carbon left. Excavators know the date from typology so nothing gained by scientific dating.

What typology? It's a bucket
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Mick Harper
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You mean 'drinking vessel' surely? Although speaking of 'typologies' the English have always been heavy drinking types so they may well be the same thing. I remember I had my own bucket behind the bar when I lived in the country. Dimple or straight, I can't remember now.
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Hatty
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Wiltshire Museum also tweets about burial goods from the Barrow Clump site

Wiltshire Museum
RT@wessexarch: Some of the graves poignantly contained items associated with warfare. This 6th-century sword was analysed through careful X-ray technology; it was revealed to be made of wrought iron and steel and created by a process known as pattern welding.


That’s more like it, some actual scientific analysis but though X-ray technology can provide clues about metal artefacts, it can't date iron or steel. Could the archaeologists explain how they decided the sword is '6th century'?

Wessex Archaeology
Hi Harriet! While X-raying doesn't indeed date items, it did reveal the blade structure (pattern-welded), which is characteristic of the period. The sword was described by the site specialist as 'overall, a typical Anglo-Saxon sword of the 6th/7th century'... (1/2)

...a date also supported by the associated shield boss and spear. We hope this helps. Full details are available in the site report, and more information is available here: https://wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/prehistoric-burial-mound-and-anglo-saxon-cemetery-barrow-clump-salisbury-plain-wiltshire…

It seems x-raying is just a means of confirming a predetermined typology
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Mick Harper
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It's a curious thing that when they know what's going to come back -- lovely patterns of subatomic burnished ferrous isotopes -- they can always afford an x-ray test. But no news on the date of the shield boss or the spear haft. But then I suppose they knew those in advance as well. 6th/7th century... well, a simple carbon test might have cleared up which one, sixth or seventh. No, sorry, I just noticed, the Wiltshire Museum curator already knew it was 'sixth'. But let's not stray into 'fifth' because that might make it Roman. Bor-ing.
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Hatty
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The recommended link to Barrow Clump reveals that several millennia of history were unearthed in the course of three digs

Barrow Clump, on the east side of the Avon valley, lies in the centre of the Salisbury Plain Military Training Area. It is the site of a large, partly extant Early Bronze Age burial mound which incorporates an earlier Beaker funerary monument, seals a Neolithic land surface, and was the focus of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, most of the 70 graves dating to the 6th century AD.

It seems a bit of a hotchpotch but perhaps some displacement is inevitable due to its location in the middle of the Salisbury Plain Military area.

We returned in July 2018, this time to investigate the possible damage caused to burials by wheeled military and farm vehicles on a track within 20 m of the south-west edge of the barrow.

Archaeologists and soldiers aren't the only forces at work. Another complicating factor is badger activity. Wessex Archaeology were first asked to dig in 2003-4 because of damage caused by badgers and returned in 2017-18 after 'further badger activity' [report to follow]

Meanwhile some unusual finds have been publicised

Radiocarbon dating has provided a coherent chronology for the important prehistoric sequence, and has also shown that Anglo-Saxon burial continued into the 7th and possibly the 8th century. Notable cemetery finds include a sword with well-preserved organic remains, a bucket with surviving yew staves, a fine great square-headed brooch and only the second Visigothic brooch of its type to be found in Britain.

What’s a Visigothic brooch doing there? How do they know it's Visigothic? But anyway, it’s reassuring to be told that finds were radiocarbon-dated even though, according to their tweet re the yew bucket, there's "nothing gained by scientific dating"
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Mick Harper
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While Hatty was off on one of her rants we were also busy with our day job, writing The Big Book of No-No's (it's a working title) and by a remarkable coincidence (ya think?) we had just reached 'typologies'. I thought I'd whet your appetites by giving three extracts

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The root of all evil is something called ‘typology’. Once an object is established as being from a particular time and place, other objects that closely resemble it can be accepted as also being from that time and place. It sounds fair enough, it is fair enough, as long as everyone concerned is being fair enough. If they are not, there are perils aplenty. The most obvious is that the first object must, by definition, have been identified right at the start when, presumably, the least was known. How then to guard against garbage in/garbage out?

Alas, not only can you not, but such is the power of precedent, every further example of the same reinforces the conclusion drawn about the first. After a hundred have been found, when all are labelled as such and placed reverently in museum glass cases, when all are in scrupulously peer-reviewed literature, when generations of students have learned and in their turn become academics and taught their students and have been invited to make television programmes about them for properly supervised broadcasters, and a whole nation, yea the whole world, treats it as being self-evidently true, it would take an intrepid soul to point out, “If we were right about the first one...”
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Mick Harper
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This is a peculiarity of academic subjects that are taught by authority but have no external authority. Once a sword is in the books as ‘Anglo-Saxon, Wessex, sixth century’, all other swords of the same type will take their cue from this. If there was an appeal to outside authority, say a scientific test on the metal showing it to be fifteen hundred years old and mined in England, then you might be in the right ball park but you would still not be able to say it was ‘Anglo-Saxon’.

But believe me, that sword has not received any scientific test of that sort. It was merely found ‘in an Anglo-Saxon context’, a hole in the ground in the west of England that contains other objects that can be identified as being from the sixth century. Maybe those objects have been scientifically tested though normally they too will have been identified by typology.
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Mick Harper
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But, as it happens, archaeology does have an external authority – history. If archaeologists have been told that the west of England during the sixth century was the domain of the Anglo-Saxons, and swords tend to be the domain of the domainers, then it is archaeologists who say it is Anglo-Saxon. Historians can only shrug. “OK, it’s Anglo-Saxon, they know their business.” It would take a very intrepid archaeologist to argue, “Well, look, colleagues, if we are putting our name to the identification of this sword as Anglo-Saxon, isn’t it our duty to check out that the west of England actually was ruled by Anglo-Saxons in the sixth century?” Soon to be an unemployed intrepid archaeologist.

Meanwhile in another branch of academia, there are historians looking at one another, "Sixth century England? That's Anglo-Saxon times for sure. We've got swords and all sorts." Meanwhile in another branch of academia there are palaeographers looking at copies of copies of medieval documents describing everything you could possibly want to know about sixth-century England.
-----------------
I now return you to the main business of this thread
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Wile E. Coyote


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Not sure it's a good example....

What on Albion, is an Anglo-Saxon sword??

Knives are not allowed......
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Hatty
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...that sword has not received any scientific test of that sort. It was merely found ‘in an Anglo-Saxon context’, a hole in the ground in the west of England that contains other objects that can be identified as being from the sixth century. Maybe those objects have been scientifically tested though normally they too will have been identified by typology.

What is meant by typology exactly? Returning to the bucket on our list, Wiltshire Museum tweeted they have a very similar Saxon bucket from another excavation at Blacknall Field in Pewsey

Barrow Clump is a Bronze Age burial mound. In the Saxon period, burials were made in and around the earlier prehistoric monument. The drinking vessel (think tankard rather than bucket) is very similar to the one from Blacknall Field Saxon cemetery also in our displays.

so I checked Historic England's report on Blacknall Field and I think the museum must be referring to

a small copper alloy bound bucket from Grave 22, and this type usually has staves made from Taxus sp. (yew), in contrast to the large types made with iron bands which usually have staves made from Quercus sp. (oak)

Unfortunately, says the Historic England report, they don't have data on the wood because earlier excavations have hindered scientific analysis. This is a familiar refrain in A-S archaeology, blame previous digs for messing things up

The wood has not been identified to species level as the interventive methods used in conservation in the 1970s would make sampling and identification difficult

As for the bucket it's not clear whether the wood is yew or not, the report merely stating "Wood preserved on inside but not accessible for sampling and identification", whereas the Barrow Clump bucket was described as 'bronze-bound' which, one might think, challenges the 'typology'.

Either way, the report of the Blacknall Field excavations starts off by bemoaning 'a lack of scientific certainty'. The first sentence reads

This Anglo-Saxon cemetery appears to cover the late fifth to middle sixth centuries based on the finds deposited within the graves

A 'number' (how many?) of burials have been dated "early fifth century" (i.e. Roman rather than 'early Anglo-Saxon'?) but, it seems, even though the bones are well preserved, the rest of the organic deposits have not survived so well. According to the report

This alkaline environment has favoured the preservation of ossiferous materials and the metalwork has not corroded too severely, but other organic materials such as wood, leather, horn and textiles only remain as traces in, or on, the corrosion layers.
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