archaeoadventuretime

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An 800-year-old Mexican skull decorated with turquoise mosaic, for decades believed to have been a masterpiece of Mixtec indigenous art is a forgery, a Dutch museum and media said Saturday.

Mixtec skull mosaic at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden

The National Museum of Ethnology in the western university city of Leiden made the shock discovery after an intensive four-year study on the skull, one of only around 20 in existence world-wide. “Radiometric dating showed the skull and the turquoise are from the correct time period and origin and are authentic,” the museum said on its website. “But alas: further investigation showed a 20th-century glue was used (to mount the mosaic),” the museum said. The teeth are also false “as it was too well preserved for a skull that lay underground for centuries,” Dutch daily Trouw reported.

Experts examine the skull

The museum bought the piece in 1963 for the equivalent of around $20,000 (19,000 euros) and was seen as a striking example of ancient Mesoamerican art. An investigation into possible skull-duggery was launched after the museum’s conservator Martin Berger received a telephone call back in 2010 from a French colleague in Marseille, Trouw said. The colleague told Berger they received a similar skull from a private collection and that person who donated the art had doubts about its authenticity. Berger and his colleagues travelled to a Paris-based laboratory where the Dutch-owned skull was analysed and where “we realised that ours was also a bit more ‘modern’ than we thought”.

Scraping the teeth for isotope analysis

Berger told the paper he suspected the fake was mounted by a Mexican dentist back in the 1940s or 1950s, when Mexican archeological sites were subjected to large-scale plunder and dealing in artworks like those of the Mixtecs was a lucrative business. Asked whether he was disappointed by the revelation, Berger told the newspaper: “No. In actual fact it’s given us a bizarre story and that’s exactly what museums want to do, to tell stories. It remains as one of our masterpieces – except, we’ve changed the information on the sign board.” In any case, said Berger, the skull is only a “partial forgery”. “The skull as well as the turquoise are unique archaeological material. Only, the Mixtecs themselves didn’t do the glueing,” he said. Similar Central American crystal skulls housed in museums in Paris, London and Washington, D.C. believed to have been pre-Colombian, were revealed to be fake in a scientific study published in 2008.

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lostinhistory said: what is the pink material you’re using?

It’s dental wax that you heat and mould to any shape you like. The fill is made of dental plaster.

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Second 'arifact' reconstruction. I believe I need to watch some more Bob Ross to get the hang of this art thing.

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My first 'artifact' reconstruction in conservation studies woo!!

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Seven Major Archaeological Discoveries of 2015

From sunken treasure to ceremonial bobcat burials, it’s time to look back at the year’s biggest finds.

2015 was a year when archaeology frequently made headlines around the world, but unfortunately, it was all too often for the same terrible reason. This was the year when ISIS (Islamic State) released their full destructive fury on ancient sites and cultural monuments across Syria and Iraq.

But this was also the year that archaeologists triumphed in the field. From plunging deep into the rainforests of Central America in search of new civilizations to altering our understanding of human behavior by simply re-inspecting the contents of dusty museum archives, researchers have made 2015 a spectacular year for archaeology. Read more.

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Had a wonderful time at Fan Expo Toronto this weekend! Many thanks to Cosplayers Canada for taking these awesome photos!

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Spring at the the drive-in. Bring your snowmobile!

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The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.

Terry Pratchett 28 April 1948 - 12 March 2015 (via thejunglenook)

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I’m not saying that these angels are new, but I’ve never noticed them before. 

Though based on their appearance, I’d advise not blinking while passing by.

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Just went on an owl hike tonight at the local museum. We didn't see any, but there were some far away calls that sounded like a screech owl. Plus side, I did get to handle the skull of a great horned owl.

My, what large sclerotic rings you have; all the better to support the eyeball with.

Snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus).

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These amazing photos were done by Photographer Edy Hardjo, and believe it or not there's more here

I'm still crying over batman though lol

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[Picture: Background — a six piece pie style colour split, alternating purple and green. Foreground — a picture of a fox. Top text: “Continual agricultural use of the area over the past three millennia… ” Bottom text: “ PLOW ZONE ”]

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Check out the official poster for Marvel’s “Avengers: Age Of Ultron”!

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It looks as if London Ontario is going for a much larger scale Comic Con this year. So far they've got Ron Pearlman signed on and that's freaking awesome!! I'm really hoping this thing gets big, it'd be fantastic to have a large scale con so close. 

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is -25 warm enough to dig in?

It's been a long winter and I'm really missing digging with my archaeobros. I should be paying a visit to the fantastic Ska-Nah-Doht museum tomorrow so that should provide a quick fix. If I get any cool pictures I'll be sure to share them.

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Where did our species come from, and how did we get from there to everywhere? Genetic studies have supplied a convincing answer to the first question: Our modern human ancestors evolved in Africa, then swept across Eurasia beginning some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. Now, a pair of American archaeologists claim to have uncovered the route those early Homo sapiens took on their way to populating the planet.

By following the broken trail of stone tools that modern humans left behind like bread crumbs marking their path, researchers propose that our ancestors took a circuitous path through Arabia, pausing there for some 50,000 years when it was a green oasis. Then they journeyed on to the Middle East, where they first encountered Neanderthals. Read more.

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This iron helmet is the only one that is found in Scandinavia dating back to the Viking Age. Why are not more found? (Photo: Museum of Cultural History, Oslo)