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THE SCIENTIFIC DETECTION OF FAKES AND FORGERIES

by Paul T. Craddock
In practice the art historian and the scientist must work akes and forgeries are the inevitable consequences of the together. Science can offer a range of powerful investigative high prices paid for antiquities and scientific investigation techniques but they must be directed. For example, some has an important but sometimes equivocal role in their years ago the British Museum was offered a Medieval detection. Many articles have been written on the subject bronze aquamanile (a vessel for holding water that could be but the best book to date on scientific authentication is poured to cleanse the hands of Stuart Fleming's Authenticity in Art [2] and the subject will be covered guests at banquets) in the form of a ... it shows the quagmire of unicorn. Apparently unicorn aquain some detail in this author's forthmaniles are very rare, and thus coming book 1. embittered controversy in expensive, but horses are much which a physical scientist is more common, and this was reflectIt should be made clear at once that likely to have to wade once he ed in the asking price. The only there are two very different types of deceptive antiquity, the forgery involves himself with material way in which the creature on offer differed from a horse was the horn. where the entire object is a recent of doubtful origin. Readers That clearly was the region of interproduction, made to deceive and having it in mind to involve est as explained to us by the curator, the fake, where an artefact of some thus it was no great surprise when age has been deceptively changed, themselves in authenticity radiography of the head showed the usually to increase its value. The testing take warning. horn was an insertion and nonlatter tend to prompt more interestdestructive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) ing, questions, not just is it old or (These are the rueful remarks of Martin analysis showed the horn was of new, but rather trying to establish Aitken [1] , of the Oxford Laboratory for brass, just copper and zinc, whereas what has happened to the piece, Archaeology and the History of Art, conthe rest of the beast was a mixed when and why. For this the coopcerning the problematic ceramics from alloy, of copper with tin, lead and eration of the archaeologist or art Glozel in France) zinc. Furthermore, the patina was historian is essential. genuine over most of the creature, but in the vicinity of the horn it was Scientific authentication can be persynthetic. Proof certain that the horn was an addition and ceived as a series of conflicts, with differing degrees of realithus the aquamanile as a unicorn was a fake. If, however ty, some are real, others not. The subject can be viewed as a the piece had been handed to us with no advice we would contest between the forger, intent on deceiving scientific very likely have gone for an inconspicuous area such as the methodology, and as a conflict between the perceived differunderside of the hooves and concluded that the piece was ing approaches of art history and science. genuine, as indeed 99% of it was, it was the crucial 1% to which we had to be directed. To address, and hopefully to dispel, the latter first, there is a perception, mainly amongst the art historians, that the scienSo often in authentication work the object under scrutiny is tific approach is somehow more objective than their stylistic not a forgery but a deceptively restored damaged piece or a approach. This probably arises because the scientific data mundane piece that, like the unicorn, has been transformed can so often be presented in numerical form, seeming to into the unique. The fake Tudor coffee pot (Plate 1), now in have a finality that can brook no dissention. In fact, of the possession of the Goldsmith's Company in London procourse, the very figures themselves have limits of detection, vides a suitably bizarre example. The forgers of English silprecision and accuracy, which even when quoted in reports ver seem to have an inordinate respect for the hallmarks to the art historian seem to be rarely understood. Perhaps punched on the pieces, and the ability of the Antique Plate the scientist really does need to explain the limits of confiCommittee of the Goldsmiths Company to detect false dence of the data more carefully. However, it is not the marks, they have, after all, 700 years experience! Thus most numbers themselves, but rather their interpretation that is forged and faked English plate manages to incorporate a all important, and here it comes down to judgements based genuine hallmark. These were the letters, denoting that the on experience and reference to previous examinations and / piece had been assayed, as well as the date, place of assay or comparison with known genuine pieces, which of course, is exactly the approach adopted by the art historian.
Dr. P.T. Craddock <pcraddock@british-museum.ac.uk>, Dept. of Scientific Research, The British Museum, London UK, WC1B 3DG

1.

Craddock, P.T., The Scientific Examination of Copies, Fakes and Forgeries, Heinemann Butterworth, Oxford, (forthcoming).

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pass analysis. In particular he used natural ultramarine for his blues, manufactured from the natural blue semi precious stone, lapis lazuli, and it is surely no coincidence that the first chapter of de Wild's book is devoted to blue pigments and their recognition. He obtained his ultramarine, at great expense from Winsor and Newton in London. When, belatedly, X-ray diffraction (XRD) tests were performed on the pigments on his paintings, it was found that the ultramarine had been adulterated with cobalt oxide blue which was very much cheaper, possibly a case of the cheater cheated! In fact van Meegeren need not have taken such pains Plot of the Age / Radioactivity to ensure that his forged showing the return to equilibrium paintings would escape of 210Pb after smelting of the lead scientific detection. No ore, which will have removed most one bothered to seriously 226 of the Ra. It is assumed here 210 that the activity of the Pb imme- test them until after van diately after smelting was x100 the Meegeren's arrest for collaborating with the Nazis. activity of the remaining 226Ra. His crime was allegedly (From Fleming 1975, p.46) selling to Reichmarshall Hermann Goering, Dutch masterpieces, namely one of his forged Vermeers. The scientific examination was finally carried out [6] , not as anticipated by van Meegeren, to convince the Dutch art establishment that the paintings were authentic, but rather to try and convince the court that they were forgeries. As a final irony, after van Meegeren's death in 1947 a very bitter dispute took place between Coremans and the art historian Jean Decoen, the latter convinced that some of the paintings were genuine, including the Supper at Emmaus [7] , which was van Meegeren's first serious forged Vermeer and over which he had been especially careful. Some years later measurements of the 210 Pb isotope of the lead in the lead white of the paintings showed that the lead is likely to have been smelted long after Vermeer's death [8] . Put very briefly, the galena, PbS, lead ore usually contains small amounts of 238 U, the long term decay of which generates 226 Ra, which in turn begets 210 Pb, which itself decays relatively quickly to 206 Pb. Thus in the ground an equilibrium becomes established, between the various isotopes, but on smelting the ore the radium and lead part company, the majority of the radium goes with the slag, whilst the 210 Pb naturally goes with the rest of the lead. Thus immediately

Plate 1 From Chalice to Coffee Pot. (Courtesy the Goldsmith's Company)

and the maker. In this instance it seems that the body of a late Medieval chalice has been taken and now forms the body of a coffee pot. The body has hallmarks for London for the early 16th century, approximately 150 years before the first coffee reached England. The anachronism here is obvious but chemical analysis could have been applied. Through the Post Medieval period and beyond the gold content of silver steadily declined as more and more efficient means of recovering it were introduced [3] and thus it could be expected that the Fig. 1 body of the chalice would contain more gold than the spout, unless that had also been made from a piece of 16th century silver. However, the higher gold contents are not invariable, for example, much of the silver coming into Europe from South America from the mid 16th century intrinsically contains very little gold.

HAN VAN MEEGEREN AND START OF SCIENTIFIC FORGERY

To a degree there is a real conflict between faker and scientist, with the former trying to anticipate the techniques of the latter, and the latter trying to stay one jump ahead. The story here commences with fine art, where back in the early part of the 20th century, scientific techniques such as radiography and identification of pigments began to be systematically applied to paintings for authentication purposes, sometimes at dedicated laboratories such as that established at the Fogg Museum, Harvard in 1928. This was accompanied by the first issue of Technical Studies in the Field of Fine Arts in 1932, and the publication of books such as Martin de Wild's Scientific Examination of Pictures in 1929 [4]. Thus when Han van Meegeren commenced on his career of forging the paintings of de Hoogh and Vermeer in the early 1930s [5] he anticipated that it was likely that they would be subjected to scientific authentication. He first carried out careful experimentation to produce a medium that would give a surface that would pass the then rather ad hoc tests, but more specifically he was very careful to try and ensure that the reused canvases on which he painted would be convincing not only in natural light but by X-rays as well. He also selected and ground his own pigments very carefully so that they would be appropriate for the 17th century and

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after smelting there is far more 210 Pb than could be accounted for by the surviving amount of radium in the lead. 210 Pb has a relatively short half-life and thus after a couple of centuries equilibrium between the 210 Pb and the remaining radium will have been re-established (Fig. 1). Samples taken by Keisch from the lead white of Van Meergeren's paintings, including the Supper at Emmaus, which Decoens had pronounced genuine, showed the 210 Pb to be far too high in relation to the 226 Ra content realistically to have been smelted in the 17th century. This seems to have been the final proof that has convinced everyone, but it is chastening to realise that there were post17th century cobalt pigments in the paint that could have been detected in the 1930s and if radiographs had been taken then their careful examination would have revealed that the paintings were made on canvases that were already very old when repainted. This would have provided damning scientific evidence at the very outset if only anyone had taken scientific examination as seriously as van Meegeren. In the author's experience there are perhaps more instances of disagreements between the scientists themselves working on the same object than between scientists and the art historians. This can be either where different techniques were being used, as exemplified by the studies on King Arthur's Round Table at Winchester, or sometimes even on the interpretation of the same data, as exemplified by Drake's Plate of Brass. ation of the Order of the Round Table, inaugurated by King Edward III in 1344. The table is constructed radially from 49 great oaken planks cut from a limited number of trees. Absolute dating of the felling of the trees is impossible because all of the planks have been stripped of their bark and the majority of the sapwood. Radiocarbon dating suggested a range of dates for felling the trees, with the latest being in the 14th century. Dendrochronology indicated a similar wide range of felling dates but suggested the trees were likely to have been felled in the mid 13th century. The estimated felling dates for the planks from one tree varied consistently by between 60 to 70 years and according to Biddle (p.328) 'show no semblance of agreement'. It is sobering to reflect that the dates produced by either of the conflicting techniques in themselves would have been regarded as conclusive.

DRAKE'S PLATE OF BRASS

The plate was reported to have been found in Marin County in San Francisco Bay in 1936. It carries a crudely carved inscription claiming the surrounding land for Queen Elizabeth of England in the name of Francis Drake, and dated 1579. If genuine this would be the very plate that Drake, in his book The World Encompassed, stated that he had left as a record of his visit during his epic voyage.

The plate was first scientifically examined shortly after its discovery by Fink and Polushkin [10] who, on the basis of This mighty table top is 18 feet in diameter, weighs 1.25 the metal thickness, patina and composition claimed it as tons, and has certainly been in the Great Hall at Winchester genuine. Forty years later, and on the same criteria, Michel Castle, in England since at least 1468 (Plate 2). Around the and Asaro [11] and Hedges [12] suggested that it was modedges are emblazoned the ern. Fink and Polushkin measnames of Arthur and his ured the thickness of the plate knights and thus the table was and found it to be fairly uniascribed by tradition to him. form at 3.38 0.08 mm but still No one now seriously believes considered it to be hammered. that this was the Round Table, Michel and Asaro believed it to belonging to the Arthurian be rolled sheet and thus modCamelot of legend, but quesern. In fact this is maybe of no tions remained as to when the great significance as some early table was made and why. As 17th century pictures are paintpart of a major study of all ed on rolled copper sheet [13] . aspects of the table, Martin The patina was described as Biddle [9] tried to resolve these being soft and 'probably organquestions, and unfortunately ic', but was not analysed furutilised two very different ther. The composition of the techniques, radiocarbon dating metal itself is more interesting, and dendrochronology, in a and illustrates the sort of judgebelt and braces approach that ments that have to be made in he probably now deeply authenticity studies. The zinc regrets. Two possible occacontent was estimated from the sions suggested themselves to metallographic structure in 1938 Biddle, King Edward I held a Plate 2 King Arthur's Round Table which has hung in the to lie between 34 and 39%, and great tournament at Great Hall of Winchester castle for over 500 years. Hedges[12] determined the comWinchester in 1290, for which But which King had it made? Certainly not Arthur, position by XRF analysis on the table would have been but after one of the most intensive radiocarbon drillings from several locations and dendrochronological surveys ever on a single appropriate, or it could have on the plate and found that the object, we still don't know. (From Current been associated with the creaverage zinc content was 34.8

KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE AT WINCHESTER

Archaeology)

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0.4%, which represents good agreement between the two very different methods of determination. The problems arose over interpretation. Fink and Polushkin thought that the zinc content was acceptable for 16th century brass, Michel and Asaro and Hedges thought the zinc content too high for the brass to have been made by the cementation process, that was normally used in Post Medieval Europe [14] . In this process the calcined zinc ore, charcoal and finely divided copper were heated in a closed crucible. The charcoal reduced the zinc oxide to zinc vapour, some of which dissolved in the copper to form the brass. Using this method the maximum zinc content was 33%, and the plate is apparently above that limit, but not by much. It was suggested that the brass must have been made by mixing copper and zinc metals together and was therefore modern. This is likely, but it must be stated that as early as 1512 cargoes of zinc metal were being imported into London from India, presumably to be turned into brass [15,16] . Thus although it does appear that the plate is probably not of the 16th century, the evidence is still far from conclusive. deals with reproducible phenomena, rather forgetting that the Resurrection itself was most certainly a non-reproducible event, central to the beliefs of Christianity, which many of them profess to believe. Ultimately it comes down to faith, which, as yet, one cannot test with a spectrometer. The calibration of radiocarbon dates has shown that there is not a linear relationship between the 14 C content and time, there are certain periods in the past where there are significant deviations, making translation of radiocarbon years into calendar years difficult. For most authenticity purposes this is not so important where all that is being attempted is to distinguish between ancient and modern. One period where the variations are significant, even for authenticity studies, is the Post Medieval period. This means that for most items stylistically dated after about 1700 AD radio carbon dating alone will not give a meaningful date, the piece could be original or recent. One important exception to this is where the object incorporates material the carbon of which formed part of organisms growing after 1950. These will contain greatly enhanced levels of 14 C, known as "bomb carbon", originating from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing [8] . This is very recognisable, and as the amount of 14 C in the atmosphere is now slowly but steadily decreasing, following the test ban treaty of 1963, means that quite precise dates are possible in some instances (Fig. 2). Even mushroom clouds can have a silver lining! The Vinland Map

APPROACHES TO AUTHENTICITY
These can be covered here under three categories; the application of the standard archaeological physical dating techniques, radiocarbon, thermoluminesence (TL) and dendrochronology; technical examination to determine the composition and methods of construction; and evidence of ageing. Dating The advent of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating over the last 30 years, using samples measured in milligrams, rather than the grams previously required, has made carbon dating a feasible method for dating antiquities and art objects where minimal sampling is a prerequisite.

A recent example of how the presence of bomb carbon can be used is given by the radiocarbon dating of the Vinland Map [19] . The story of the discovery of the map, its acquisition and the continuing acrimonious debate over its authenticity has been set out by Skelton et al [20] and rather differently by Seaver [21] , but can be summarised here. The map, bound in with a medieval manuscript, seems to have first appeared in the late 1950s, although certain records of it Probably the most well known AMS dating exercise to date exist only from the early has been on the Shroud of Turin, 1960s. It is drawn in ink where the 14 C content seemed to on parchment and depicts indicate that the flax from which the world, including in the the linen had been produced was top left hand corner a large growing in the 13th or early 14th island to the west of century AD, a date not far Greenland labelled removed from its first firmly Vinland. The map purrecorded existence in France. ports to date from the 15th Inevitably this was not the end of century, and if genuine, the debate, and for the often torwould be the earliest cartotuous wranglings, sometimes graphic depiction of North between the scientists themAmerica (It would also be selves, see Wilson [17] and the first depiction of Gove [18] . Many attempts have Greenland as an island, been made to explain away the and in the opposite right radiocarbon date, including sughand side of the map is a gestions of all sorts of irradiation remarkably accurate depicthat could have occurred at the tion of north east Asia and moment of the Resurrection, the islands of Japan). thereby enhancing the 14 C conThe scientific examination 14 tent. These scenarios have been Fig. 2 Plot of the increase in the levels of C in the atmosdismissed by the dating scientists phere during the 1950s and 1960s, and as reflected in has previously concentrated on the ink, and in paron the grounds that science only the 14C of plants (from Ref. [8]).

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ticular the presence of titanium dioxide in the form known as anatase [22] . This was apparently only used in paints etc. from the 1920s, but others have claimed that the amounts detected in the ink are orders of magnitude less than first claimed, and anyway anatase could have been produced at an earlier date. The parchment itself has usually been regarded as medieval, whatever the date of the map drawn upon it, and the radiocarbon dates obtained by and Donahue et al [19] [ see also Gove [23] ] were 15th century AD. It is usual practice to carefully wash the samples before dating to remove contaminants, and Donahue et al [19] dated the extracts from washing with aqueous solutions of acid and alkali and with acetone. The extract dissolved by the aqueous treatment was found to contain bomb carbon. As nuclear testing only got underway in the early 1950s and the map in its present form was seen by many people in the early 1960s, this shows that the parchment must have undergone some serious treatment in the 1950s just prior to its first appearance, as pointed out by Ambers and Bowman [24] . One can take this further because although the organic components in the various extracts were not analysed, a common treatment for parchment is to size it with gelatine and the usual source of this would be animal bones or hides. These could well have picked up bomb carbon and gelatine is, of course, water soluble. This new information would seem to disprove one of the leading hypotheses that the map was made in the 1930s to discredit the Nazis [21] , but it does show that something fairly major happened to the parchment on which the map is drawn just prior to its appearance on the market. bronze. The two were analysed with an open architecture XRF set that allows quite large objects to be positioned directly in the beam of primary X rays (Plate 4). This showed that the upper figurine in Plate 3 to be of brass, and thus it is not Etruscan but instead it is likely to have been cast in the 19th century by one of the Italian foundries that specialised in reproductions of antiquities. It should be stressed that these were quite legitimate copies and were usually marked as such. However, stamps and other marks identifying the piece as modern can all too easily be filled in or filed away, and the object offered for sale as an antiquity. This case study must seem like the perfect illustration of the scientific approach swiftly providing a clear and unambiguous answer. But, of course, reality is different. All that has been obtained is an identification of the metals at the uncleaned surface of the object. Surfaces may have been plated, will almost certainly have corroded to some extent, and may well have been conserved. A salutary example is provided by another Etruscan bronze. This is a large bowl that was examined by the author as part of a general survey of Etruscan bronzes [26] , and the XRF analysis of the surface showed that it was apparently made of brass. The bowl is from of one of the most important groups of material from ancient Etruscan tombs in the British Museum. Thus the Dept. of Greek and Roman antiquities received the news that one of the major components of the tomb contents was likely to be a forgery with some alarm and readily consented to a drilling being made into the body metal. Analysis of the drillings showed the body metal to be of copper with some tin and lead, that is, a leaded bronze quite typical of Etruscan bronzes. The zinc in the surface corrosion is likely to have come from some unrecorded electrochemical treatment in the 19th or early 20th century to loosen and remove some of the corrosion [27] . In this treatment the bronze would have been wrapped in zinc foil and placed in an aqueous acidic or alkaline electrolyte and sometimes a small potential was applied. The zinc dissolved releasing hydrogen, which effected the reduction, and of course some of the zinc salts would soak into the remaining copper mineralisation. Unless the bronzes were very carefully washed afterwards some zinc would remain. Thus many ancient bronzes probably have zinc salts in their otherwise genuine patinas. The treatment of localised outbreaks of copper chloride cor-

MATERIALS
Another approach to authentication is to ascertain if the artefact is made of materials commensurate with its supposed age. With copper alloy items an important indicator is whether the alloy is of bronze, the alloy of copper and tin, or of brass, the alloy of copper with zinc (NB antiquities or art objects made of copper alloy that are patinated are almost invariably described as bronze no matter what their composition). Put very simply, brass began to be used about 2000 years ago over much of the Old World, thus an artefact of brass, which is stylistically much earlier will be suspect (for more on the history of zinc and brass, see Craddock) [15] . For most authenticity studies non-destructive methods are essential, and thus techniques such as energy dispersive X ray fluorescence, once described as 'the curator's dream instrument' are very useful [25] , and modern portable sets make the technique very convenient. It is possible to get a virtually instantaneous non-destructive identification of the inorganic components of an artefact, as the following example shows. The Two Banqueters The British Museum possesses two 'bronze' figurines elegantly reclining at a banquet (Plate 3). One is clearly a copy of the other, but both are good castings, and have minimal corrosion and are both generally in good condition, and thus it is not easy at a glance to tell which is original and which is the copy. They are Etruscan in style, dateable to the early 5th century BC, that is, long before the general introduction of brass, the original really should be of

Plate 3 The two banqueters (T. Milton / The British Museum)

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bronzes was purchased by the British Museum in the 1820s, and still forms a major part of the classical bronze collection. In the galleries where they are displayed their dark hues are very noticeable compared to the bronzes alongside which still retain their natural patination. The study on the surface alteration and patina on other metals, notably stone, is much less advanced. This has been illustrated by the authenticity studies over the past twenty years or so, on the above life size marble statue of a youth in the Attic Greek style of the 6th century BC. This was finally acquired by the Getty Museum in 1986, but soon became their 'Curious Spurious Kouros' as acerbically summed up by Thomas Hoving [30] , the ex-director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The statue was acquired from a supposed Swiss collection, which really did turn out to be spurious. Stylistic debate over the statue ranges those who believe it to be a masterpiece of Classical antiquity against those who equally sincerely believe it to be a risible modern forgery [31] . Thus scientific examination was called in to help, or as it turned out, to add to the confusion. Analysis of the stone by a combination of techniques including petrology, mineralogy, grain size analysis, trace element analysis, stable isotope analysis and cathodoluminescence identified the stone as being dolomite most likely from the quarries on the island of Thasos in the northern Aegean (see Herz 2001 for an overview article of the progress made in recent years on the provenancing of marble in the Mediterranean world) [32] . The studies on the patination initially assumed that it was largely formed of calcite, CaCO 3 , redeposited on the surface of the marble following surface dissolution, in a process known as dedolomitisation, which is a well known weathering phenomenon of dolomitic marbles during burial [33] . However, subsequent XRD examination showed the patina to be largely composed of Whewellite, hydrated calcium oxalate. This has now been found on a number of exposed marbles and is apparently related to the oxalate coatings found on many rock surfaces, sometimes referred to as rock varnish etc., and seems to be formed from the decomposition of the micro-organisms living on the rock surface. It was initially claimed that such oxalate deposits could not be artificially induced, but latterly this was achieved by another group of researchers by placing the marble in what amounted to a vat of hot potato soup. The prevalence of these oxalate-based natural patinas on carbonate rocks has only very recently been fully appreciated, thus if the statue really is a forgery, then someone back in the early 1980s at the latest had given it a false patina of a type that was not generally known to exist. Attempts to date the rock varnish directly by AMS or cation dating have proved extremely controversial [34] .

Plate 4 One of the banqueters positioned in the path of the X-ray beam. Secondary X-rays emitted from the surface of the object are analysed and displayed on the screen to the right. In this instance the two outer peaks are for copper and the one in between is for zinc, suggesting that the figure is not a genuine Etruscan antiquity. (A. Milton / The British Museum)

rosion with drops of silver nitrate is another potential source of misinterpretation, in danger of being mistaken for evidence of silver plating by the unwary analyst. Those engaged in authentication work must have a thorough knowledge of the many processes and treatments that may befall a real antiquity as well as those used by the fakers.

AGEING
The characteristic surface changes that take place through the millennia, especially if the artefact is buried, provide another approach to their authentication. There have been many studies on the patination of bronze, both natural and synthetic, not least because as well as providing a means of authentication, the patina has always been the subject of aesthetic appreciation in its own right [28,29] . Thus there is extensive information on the chemistry and mineralogy of the various naturally forming corrosion products on copper alloys and also on the characteristics of synthetic patinations, including those applied to deceive (see David Scott's 2002 magisterial work on the subject) [13] . The usual methods of examination include XRF with XRD and Raman microscopy to identify the minerals present. Where minerals have been stuck to the surface the organic binders can sometimes be revealed by ultra violet radiation, which can induce fluorescence. Problems can arise through the seemingly strange things that can happen to antiquities, both real and forged. For example, in the 18th century there was a widely held view that classical bronzes originally had a black patina [28] . Unfortunately for the collectors, the bronzes coming out of the ground usually had a green patina. Some collectors, notably Richard Payne-Knight in England, were not above giving their bronzes the black patina they felt they ought to have had. The Payne-Knight collection of some hundreds of

INTERACTIONS
The serious forgeries of today are much more convincing than previously because more is known of the ancient technologies that would have been used to produce the genuine articles. The adoption of the correct technology by the forgers generally dates from the extensive publication of the

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technology concerned. Thus for example, the methods by which gold wires were produced in antiquity were first investigated in the 1920s, but with little publication. In antiquity gold and silver wires were usually made by either strip or block twisting until about the mid first millennium AD when the modern method of drawing thin rods through the holes in a draw plate was introduced and rapidly became universal (Plate 5). The forgers continued to use drawn wires up until about the early 1970s when a considerable amount of research was carried out and widely published (Oddy 1977, for example) [35] . Since then all serious forgers of ancient gold jewellery use strip or block twisted wire. Many forgeries of oriental ceramics are so competent that there have been calls for technical information on the materials and production methods to be omitted from reports. Such censorship of information may seem superficially attractive in the narrow world of dubious antiquities, but it is ultimately counterproductive and probably unworkable anyway. If this approach was followed through to its logical conclusion then it should be extended to the stylistic elements as well and the publication of the range of shapes and decorative motifs for a particular culture should also be banned. The description and publication of all aspects of the material culture of the past has always been a core duty of archaeology and curation, and it is not possible or desirable to separate the technical from the stylistic aspects. A more positive argument is that with the technical knowledge it is possible to easily detect many earlier forgeries, often made with consummate skill, but, as we now know, using the wrong materials and methods. The involvement of authenticity testing with material that has only very recently appeared on the market is a contentious subject, which must be addressed. Another consequence of the rise in prices paid for antiquities has been the quite ruinous despoliation of ancient sites around the world, looted for their saleable antiquities, which legislation has patently been unable to curb, much less to stop. One of the few effective checks amongst collectors has been the fear of fakes and forgeries. On certain well documented sites around the world where both looting and faking was rife, exposure of the extent of the faking, often by scientific means, has had the effect of killing the market and thereby saving the site from further depredation. A good example is the ceramics from Hailar, in Turkey. Hailar Excavations conducted between 1957 and 1961 by James Mellaart [36] at the small village of Hailar, near to Burdur in south west Turkey, uncovered remains of very sophisticated ceramic vessels and figurines dating from the 7th and 6th millennia BC, arguably the earliest such figurines known. Mellaart's excavations were confined to the settlement where inevitably the surviving fragments were in poor condition. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to locate the cemetery, which Mellaart suspected must exist, before the excavations came to an end. Soon afterwards ceramics similar to those found on the excavation but in much better condition, began to appear on the international art markets, and over the next decade they were acquired in considerable numbers by major museums around the world (Plate 6). But the greater range of shapes and the generally superior condition to those from controlled excavation began to arouse suspicions. Was it because they came from the putative cemetery, and being buried intact were in better condition than those that had been broken and trodden into the ground, or were they forgeries? The sheer quantity and sophistication of the unprovenanced material on the markets was undermining all attempts to categorize them, such was the uncertainty over their status. In order to clarify the situation a group of 68 pieces selected from the collections of the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean in Oxford, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York were examined. The most significant test was thermoluminescence dating which unequivocally showed that a high percentage of them were recent productions [37] . After the publication of Aitken et al's report antiquities in the Hailar style became unsaleable overnight.

Plate 5 Gold wire production ancient and modern: 4a) Strip twisting. A thin strip of gold is tightly twisted to form a tube with the running helical edges visible. 4b) Block twisting. A thin rod of gold is twisted and rolled into a wire with the edges of the rod still surviving as helical grooves in the surface. 4c) Drawn wire: Where the gold has been drawn through a worn or damaged plate these distinctive parallel striations appear along the length of the wire. (A. Milton / The British Museum)

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Examination of Works of Art, ed. W.J. Young. Laboratory of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pp. 193-8, (1973). Biddle, M., ed., King Arthur's Round Table, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, (2000). Fink, C.G. and Polushkin, E.P., Drake's plate of brass authenticated, California Historical Society Quarterly, 17, 4, pt 2 (Special Publication 14), pp. 7-28, (1938). Michel, H.V. and Asaro, F., Chemical study of the Plate of Brass, Archaeometry, 21, 1, pp. 3-20, (1979). Hedges, R.E.M., Analysis of the 'Drake Plate': Comparison with the composition of Elizabethan brass, Archaeometry, 21, 1, pp. 21-6, (1979). Scott, D.A., Copper and Bronze in Art, The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, (2002).. Craddock, P.T. and Eckstein, K., The Production of Brass by Direct Reduction in Antiquity, in Mining and Metal Production in the Past, eds. P.T. Craddock and J. Lang, BMP, London. pp. 216-30, (2003).. Craddock, P.T., ed., 2000 Years of Zinc and Brass, British Museum Occasional Paper 50, revised ed., London, (1998). Craddock, P.T., Some Analyses of Medieval Monumental Brasses, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 16, 4, pp. 315-26, (2000/1).. Wilson, I., The Blood and the Shroud, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, (1998).. Gove, H.E., Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud, Institute of Physics, Bristol (UK) and Philadelphia, (1996).. Donahue, D.J., Olin, J.S. and Harbottle, G., Determination of the radiocarbon age of parchment of the Vinland map, Radiocarbon, 44, 1, pp. 45-52, (2002).. Skelton, R.A., Marston, T.E. and Painter, G.D., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, New Haven, (1995).. Seaver, K.A., The Vinland Map: Who made it and why? New light on an old controversy, The Map Collector, 70, pp.32-40, (1995). Towe, K.M., The Vinland Map: Still a Forgery, Accounts of Chemical Research, 23, 3, pp. 84-87, (1990).. Gove, H.E., From Hiroshima to the Iceman, Institute of Physics, Bristol and Philadelphia, (1999).. Ambers, J. and Bowman, S., Letter to the Editor, Radiocarbon, 44, 2, p. 599, (2003). Hanson, V.F., The Curators Dream Instrument, in Application of Science in Examination of Works of Art, ed W.J. Young. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pp. 18-30, (1973).. Craddock, P.T., The metallurgy and composition of Etruscan bronze, Studi Etruschi, 52, pp. 211-71, (1986).. Gilberg, M., History of bronze disease and its treatment, in Early Advances in Conservation, ed. V. Daniels, British Museum Occasional Paper 65, London, pp. 59-70, (1988). Craddock, P.T., A History of patination on Bronze, in Why Fakes Matter, ed. M. Jones. BMP, London, pp. 63-70, (1992).. Hughes, R., Artificial patination, in Metal Plating and Patination, eds. S. La Niece and P.T. Craddock. Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, pp. 1-18, (1993).. Hoving, T., False Impressions, Andre Deutsch, London, (1996).. 'Kouros Colloquium', The Getty Kouros Colloquium, Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation, Museum of Cycladic Art, Kapon Editions, Athens, (1993). Aitken, M.J., Moorey, P.S. and Ucko, P., The authenticity of vessels and figurines in the Hailar style, Archaeometry, 13, 1, pp. 89-141, (1971). Herz, N., Sourcing Lithic Artifacts by Instrumental Analysis, in Earth Sciences and Archaeology, eds. P. Goldberg, V.T. Holliday and C. Reid Ferring. Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers, New York, pp. 449-69, (2001).. Margolis, S.V., Authenticating Ancient Marble Sculpture, Scientific American, 260, 6, pp. 104-10, (1989). Watchmann, A., A review of the history of dating rock varnishes, Earth-Science Reviews, 49, 1-4, pp. 261-77, (2000).. Oddy, W.A., The Production of Gold Wire in Antiquity, Gold Bulletin, 10, 3, pp. 79-87, (1977). Mellaart, J., Excavations at Hailar, 2 vols., Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, (1970). Aitken, M.J., Moorey, P.S. and Ucko, P., The authenticity of vessels and figurines in the Hailar style, Archaeometry, 13 1, pp.89-141, (1971)..

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Plate 6 Forged or looted?: Ceramic figurines from Hailar, the large double headed vase with obsidian inlaid eyes is a forgery but legal. The small vessel on the right is authentic but looted (T. Heffron / British Museum).

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

It should perhaps also be noted that much simpler tests with drops of nitric acid on the surface had also been performed. These tests showed that the encrustation on the forgeries was not a genuine hard layer of calcite that had developed on the surfaces over millennia, but was in fact just a layer of applied white clay. It does seem little short of extraordinary that none of the major museums had applied even the simplest of tests prior to purchase. It is also extraordinary that so many leading museums acquired material that their curators believed to have been illegal exports, having been clandestinely dug up and thereby destroying valuable information on them and the culture to which they belonged. As James Mellaart wrote in the introduction to his report [36] 'the whole affair was one of the most tragic chapters in the history of archaeology'. The suspected presence of fakes amongst antiquities that, being illegal exports will have no firm provenance, has shaken confidence and thus depressed the market in antiquities looted from archaeological sites around the world. As with the Hailar ceramics, only scientific testing can establish whether some classes of unprovenanced antiquity are genuine. Many of these are likely to have been looted and there is clearly a duty on the part of responsible scientific institutions not to handle such material. The forging of antiquities has perhaps unwittingly achieved a real role in the preservation of the past that scientific testing must not jeopardise! REFERENCES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Aitken, M.J., Thermoluminescence Dating, Academic Press, London, (1985).. Fleming, S., Authenticity in Art, Institute of Physics, London, (1975). Ramage, A. and Craddock, P.T., King Croesus' Gold, British Museum Piece, London, (2000).. de Wild, A.M., The Scientific Examination of Pictures, G. Bell, London, (1929).. Kilbracken, Lord, (previously J.A. Godley), Van Meergeren, Nelson, London, (1967). Coremans, P.B., Van Meergeren's Faked Vermeers and Pieter de Hooghs, J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, (1949).. Decoen, J., (trans. E.J. Labarre), Return to the Truth: Two Authentic Vermeers, Donker, Rotterdam and London, (1951).. Keisch, B., Art and the Atom: Two Dating Methods Based on Measurements of Radioactivity, in Application of Science in

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33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

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