“600-500 BC Etruscan” Ceramic Boar Vessel exposed as probable fake(twitter.com)
twitter.com
“600-500 BC Etruscan” Ceramic Boar Vessel exposed as probable fake
https://twitter.com/diffendale/status/1439204731403055114
10 comments
Thanks for this comment, I had
no idea!
Interestingly enough, the Wiki article states there is good reason to think the wolf is Etruscan but Romulus and Remus are medieval.
> However, a recent study by John Osborne at the British School at Rome concluded that the radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates were totally inconsistent. He pointed out that metal from which the wolf is made is of the Etruscan type using copper from Sardinia and that there is no sign of the adulteration common in mediaeval times, and that on the balance of probabilities, the wolf should be considered to be Etruscan.
Interestingly enough, the Wiki article states there is good reason to think the wolf is Etruscan but Romulus and Remus are medieval.
> However, a recent study by John Osborne at the British School at Rome concluded that the radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates were totally inconsistent. He pointed out that metal from which the wolf is made is of the Etruscan type using copper from Sardinia and that there is no sign of the adulteration common in mediaeval times, and that on the balance of probabilities, the wolf should be considered to be Etruscan.
Interesting. I looked into this and if it was a medival casting, it was probably a replacement for the original.
Was any extra analysis done specifically because of the vessel's status as a meme?
So much of Etruscan 'artifacts' look like a sham.
The problem is that unless you have experience digging such artifacts out of the ground and an extensive familiarity with the provenanced material others have dug out of the ground, such impressions aren't worth much. In the context of looking at listings on Etsy and eBay to learn about looting of material culture, there's plenty of stuff I've thought was fake before an archeologist set me straight with dozens of links to similar material in museums. Likewise, there's plenty of stuff I thought was real that turned out to be an obvious fake to people who know better.
Headline somewhat rearranged into more logical sentence order, as I had to shorten it from a full tweet anyway.
I am not sure it the tweet author is exposing it. The museum has long since acknowledged it is a possible fake and removed it from display.
Well, he's giving it exposure... Yeah, he at least hints at something such towards the end of the thread -- but I had no idea about that from before, so he "exposed" the whole thing at least to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitoline_Wolf