Archaeology explores the history of mankind. In the search for material heritage, however, scientists' urge to explore and their vanity can transfigure their interpretation of finds, as an exhibition in Hildesheim shows.
Image: Museum der Archäologie Herne/LWL/ J. Mühlenbrock
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Archaeological mistakes and forgeries
Myths and archaeology have fascinated people for centuries. Many museums have bought into finds that were too extraordinary to be true.
Image: Museum der Archäologie Herne/LWL/ S. Brentführer
In an amazing state of preservation
In 1896, the Louvre shelled out 200,000 francs for an ancient gold tiara, believed to have belonged to Scythian king Saitapharnes. A German archaeologist, Adolf Furtwängler, however questioned its authenticity, as the artifact lacked aging. In 1903, a goldsmith from Odessa, Israel Rouchomovsky, admitted to having created the crown, commissioned by Russian dealers.
Image: bpk/RMN-Grand Palais/Hervé Lewandowski
Much younger than first believed
In 1960, the city of Hildesheim invested 25,000 Deutsche Marks (equivalent today to €56,000) in the acquisition of a golden depiction of the Egyptian god Amun-Re. Through radiocarbon dating of the statue, it was recently determined that it was not a 3,200-year-old artifact — but rather a fake created a century ago.
Image: Museum der Archäologie Herne/LWL/ S. Brentführer
A bricklayer's fine work
The small town of Rheinzabern in southern Palatinate used to be the site of Roman pottery workshops. In the 19th century, the bricklayer Michael Kaufmann claimed to have found various reliefs, sculptures and ceramics from the ancient Roman settlement while searching for old stones and bricks. They were all strangely similar. It turned out he had produced them himself.
Image: Historisches Museum Pfalz Speyer/P. Haag-Kirchner
The last unicorn
The natural scientist Otto von Guericke (1602 - 1668) was convinced that unicorns had actually existed. In 1663, he reconstructed the skeleton of one using bones found near German town of Quedlinburg. His drawings were published in academic work on fossil science. The bones were actually from boring Ice Age mammoths and rhinos.
Image: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1749
The distant past misunderstood
The exhibition "Fake & Facts — Wrong Tracks in Archaeology" at the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum begins with a vision of the future as revealed in the graphic novel "Motel of Mysteries" by David Macaulay. In it, archaeologists in the year 4022 come across the inventory of a buried motel on land once in the US. They think it's like finding the grave of King Tutanchamun but misinterpret the find.
Image: David Macaulay
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Science should help us to understand connections. So it is up to archaeologists to investigate the cultural development of mankind: Where are our origins, how did our ancestors live, work, fight? How did they travel? Some aspects of our history are already well researched, yet new sensational finds keep popping up.
What was believed to be a crown ...Image: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/Museum der Archäologie Herne
In some cases, researchers were so eager to prove a theory that their negligence led to errors — allowing archaeologists to claim they had found unicorn remains or traces allegedly left by the mythical Greek poet Homer.
Just how much imagination can play a trick on you if you want to believe strongly enough that an object is a true discovery is evident in one find: a piece of iron with decorative fittings, a loop design and copper alloy. Researchers quickly came to the conclusion: it had to be a crown.
As it turned out later, it was actually the fitting from a bucket from the 6th century AD.
... was actually part of a bucketImage: Museum der Archäologie Herne/LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn
Ambition, vanity, business acumen
Beyond the honest mistakes made by researchers in the past, in some cases spectacular artifacts were directly forged for financial gain. Radiocarbon dating methods were not available to test the authenticity of artifacts a century ago, so it's easier to understand how a reputed institution like the Louvre Museum could have fallen for a fake gold crown than how modern-day hoaxes have managed to dupe so many people.
In an exhibition titled "Fake & Facts — Wrong Tracks in Archaeology," on show until May 26, 2019, the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim is revisiting popular but outdated assumptions about past eras as well as some of the most infamous and expensive cases of forgery.
Click through our picture gallery to find out which mistakes the archaeologists made and what the search for a unicorn has to do with it.
