Archaeological Trench Warfare

This article highlights just exactly the kind of dirty dealing that goes on when someone comes along with evidence and arguments that threaten cherished preconceptions and accepted theories - it could just as well be a story about politicians, or religious leaders or the corporate hierarchy at a Fortune 500 company. Because of its length, I won't publish the entire article here, but I highly recommend it! What is most interesting - and unfortunate - is that subsequent excavations at other sites SUPPORTED the finds at Glozel as being authentic, but that got lost in the shuffle of acrimony and charges and counter-charges of fraud and duplicity. Glozel 101: How to get ahead in archaeology If one word could be used to describe the Glozel affair, it should be "controversial". It has been described as the "Dreyfus affair" of French archaeology, and the Dreyfus equivalent was Emile Fradin, a seventeen-year-old, who together with his grandfather Claude Fradin stepped into history on 1 March 1924. Working in a field known as Duranthon, Emile was holding the handles of a plough when one of the cows pulling it stuck a foot in a cavity. Freeing the cow, the Fradins uncovered a cavity containing human bones and ceramic fragments. So far, this could have been just any usual archaeological discovery, of which some are made every week. That soon changed. It is said that the first to arrive the following day were the neighbours. They not only found but also took some of the objects. That same month, Adrienne Picandet, a local teacher, visited the Fradins' farm and decided to inform the minister of education. On 9 July, Benoit Clement, another teacher, this time from the neighbouring village and representing La Societe d'Emulation du Bourbonnais, visited the site and later returned with a man called Viple. Clement and Viple used pickaxes to break down the remaining walls, which they took away with them. Some weeks later, Emile Fradin received a letter from Viple, identifying the site as Gallo-Roman. He added that he felt it to be of little interest. His advice was to recommence cultivation of the field-which is what the Fradin family did. And this might perhaps have been the end of the saga, but not so. The January 1925 Bulletin de la Societe d'Emulation du Bourbonnais reported on the findings. It brought the story to the attention of Antonin Morlet, a Vichy physician and amateur archaeologist. Morlet visited Clement and was intrigued by the findings. Morlet was an "amateur specialist" in the Gallo-Roman period (first to fourth centuries AD) and believed that the objects from Glozel were older. He thought that some might even date from the Magdalenian period (12,000-9500 BC). Both Morlet and Clément visited the farm and the field on 26 April 1925, and Morlet offered the Fradins 200 francs per year to be allowed to complete the excavation. Morlet began his excavations on 24 May, discovering tablets, idols, bone and flint tools, and engraved stones. He identified the site as Neolithic and published his "Nouvelle Station Néolithique" in September 1925, listing Emile Fradin as co-author. He argued that the site was, as the title of the article states, Neolithic in nature. Though Morlet dated it as Neolithic, he was not blind to see that the site contained objects from various epochs. He still upheld his belief that some artefacts appeared to be older, belonging to the Magdalenian period, but added that the techniques that had been used appeared to be Neolithic. As such, he identified Glozel as a transition site between both eras, even though it was known that the two eras were separated by several millennia. Certain objects were indeed anachronistic: one stone showed a reindeer, accompanied by letters that appeared to be an alphabet. The reindeer vanished from that region around 10,000 BC, yet the earliest known form of writing was established around 3300 BC, and that was in the Middle East. The general consensus was that, locally, one would have to wait a further three millennia before the introduction of writing. Worse, the script appeared to be comparable with the Phoenician alphabet, dated to c. 1000 BC, or to the Iberian script, which was derived from it. But, of course, it was "known" that no Phoenician colony could have been located in Glozel. From a site that seemed to have little or no importance, Glozel had become a site that could upset the world of archaeology. ...