Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” claimed to have contained his bones,
was shown to be a recent forgery (Mayell 2003).
A common type of forgery consists not of newly made objects, but of the
remains of old ones, which serve as the foundation for additional new work.
The advantages of this method are obvious: since the basic materials of this
type of forgeries have all the marks of age and authenticity, the objects seem
to have been restored, and the borderline between restoration and outright
forgery is difficult to draw. Occasionally, enthusiastic restorers create
new styles by working derivatively from small fragments; many “ancient”
bronzes and ceramics are faked in this way, sometimes supplemented by
additional parts (Woolley 1962; Schmitt 1959).
When ancient objects are removed from their original archaeological
location, they lose much of their initial value to the scholar, since site, posi-
tion, and surroundings convey a great deal of information about an object
and also enable its authentication. Authenticating isolated objects relies on
the fact that antiquities carry within themselves evidence of the time and
place of their manufacture (Jones 1992; Jaffé and Van der Tweel 1979).
In archaeology and art the term
authenticity
refers to the positive identi-
fication of objects, their origin and attributes, and describes the relative
integrity of the object in relation to its original creation.
Authentication
is,
therefore, the process of determining whether objects are what they are
asserted to be. Nowadays, archaeological, artistic, and scientific guidelines
generally complement one another in determining the authenticity of
objects, and the authentication of antiquities is generally based on collabo-
rative archaeological, artistic, and scientific studies. The scientific examina-
tion of antiquities has therefore become not merely desirable but absolutely
essential for the positive identification of antiquities. The information
derived from archaeological, stylistic, and aesthetic considerations is gener-
ally reinforced by scientific evidence (Bibliothèque Nationale 1988). During
the second half of the twentieth century the results of many physical and
chemical investigations on antiquities revealed that such studies are of great
assistance for establishing the authenticity or otherwise of antiquities.
18.1. TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS
OF AUTHENTICATION
Many material properties lend themselves to the authentication of objects;
the composition and the physical and chemical properties of materials and
their decay products provide objective criteria for establishing the authen-
ticity of archaeological objects. Contradictions between the claimed origin or
