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Chapter 56 - Fakes and Dubitanda

from Afterword - Aegean Art Through Forgers’ Eyes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

Jean-Claude Poursat
Affiliation:
University of Clermont-Ferrand
Carl Knappett
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

Forgers of antiquities have been active across all domains of archaeology ever since artefacts unearthed through excavation, whether legal or illegal, generated publicity and attained significant market value. This happened very rapidly in the case of Aegean art (H.-G. Buchholz, Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 1, 113–35). Very shortly after Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenae, from 1883, reports appeared of a workshop making fake Mycenaean signet rings in the Peloponnese (Milchhöfer 1883, 59, n. 1). Evans’s work at Knossos from 1900 gave a major boost to the manufacture of fake Minoan antiquities.

Such discoveries took place in conditions especially favourable to forgery. The looting in Greece and Turkey of Hellenistic cemeteries at Tanagra (near Thebes in Boeotia) and at Myrina (near Izmir) released numerous terracotta figurines (the ‘Tanagras’) onto the market from the 1880s onwards. Several workshops made multiple copies, especially on Crete.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Lapatin, 2002: Lapatin, K., Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History, Boston, MA.Google Scholar

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