Forgeries and archaeology

Abstract

The art world is a multi-billion-dollar industry which captures world headlines on a regular basis. However, also in archaeology and museum science, high-profile objects regularly have experts arguing about their veracity. Some may have been looted, others may be fakes, some may be heavily restored or misattributed. In these cases, analytical science is often called on to settle the dispute. This contribution discusses the context and meaning of attribution and provenance determination of objects, and the different approaches to identifying forgery of archaeological objects.