Is This a Fake? Scientific Approaches to Questions of Authenticity in the 21st Century
78 views · Published 15 May 2017 · 26:39 · Indexed 18 October 2026
Channel: wpsu · 2017 · Science & Technology
Is This a Fake? Scientific Approaches to Questions of Authenticity in the 21st Century - Anthony Cutler At a time when the skills of forgers across a wide variety of mediums are ever more sophisticated, and their creations command hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on the market, the need for objective means to detect them is all the more pressing. In the “old days” the connoisseur’s eye was considered a sufficient tool – except that connoisseurs often presented conflicting opinions and seem to have been unaware of the rampant contemporary manufacture of things that purported to be ancient. I consider one object – an ivory plaque depicting Jesus Christ – recently sold at auction and scrutinize it first using the traditional approach of comparative visual analysis and then in the light of radiocarbon dating of the material. For a variety of reasons, repeated tests of this sort yielded unsatisfactory answers. This failure does not disqualify the procedures involved in their own right, but it does point to the necessity of cooperation between scientists and humanists.
