"Ancient" Vase Fantasies Again

From the PACHI Blog:

"Ancient" Vase Fantasies Again: UPDATE Matt Beall

 

                           .                                                                  

Some people never learn, you can tell 'em and its like water off a duck's back. So Matt Beall, having set his pal Luke Caverns on me for discussing his fantasies about his "perfectly-round-might-be-lost-technology"..."ancient Egyptian stone vase" has just published another - er, another "perfectly-round-might-be-lost-technology"..."ancient Egyptian stone vase". And just to stave off any criticisms, and show why he is so confident that this is a real ancient vase... he shows the piece of paper. At the top it has the dealer's name. My ears prick up. It is a known name. There is a thread on this business on a collectors' forum I presume Mr Beall will have come across researching his artefact. I've written about them twice:  "Emptor, Caveat and Do Your Homework" Saturday 23 April 2022, and "A Lady and her Scarab" Thursday 14 April 2022.

But let's look at the claimed collection history: there are three families named - but I have not found any other reference to their collections. Then it's a "French family" and "inherited" within that unnamed family, and then the new owner IS named.

Where it was before "1962" is not given. Mr Beall's belief that this piece of paper authenticates this object relies on the belief that in 1962 there were no lathes in stonemasons' yards that could turn a stone object. Yeah, right. Get a vase from a proper archaeological contet Mr Beall, not off the market. What there is not to understand?

UPDATE 25.05.2024

Antiquities buyer Matt Beall who yesterday was claiming he was posting stuff on social media about the vases he bought in order to "share" and learn what people think seems not to be interested in learning what happens when archaeologists get shown a dodgy artefact with inadequate documentation. So now hwe's blocked me. To what extent is any of this "alt.archaeology" stuff a real intellectual curiosity and desire to learn (and cvontribute) and how much is it attention-seeking (look-at-me-what-I've-got/what-controversial-thing-I-said) clickbait? I suspect a lot of the latter. 

"Are we being LIED TO about ancient history?"

 

                    Screen grab from You Tube video - fair use for purposes of criticism                         

For some reason, Elon Musk's Twitter now insists on filling my Twitter page with time-wasting, mind-rottingly vacant pseudo-archaeological crap. It would not be so bad ("multiple points of view") if it were not abundantly clear that the people writing these texts are deliberately shunning any opportunity to get better acquainted with the material they are warbling about. They know there is another side to the story, but they will not make the effort to actually look with any degree of application or comprehension at it. It's more fun to believe conspiracies and mysteries. So, it turns out that among the stuff one can find out there, You Tuber Luke Caverns [the Texas typo-hunting anthropology graduate (he says) whose recent output indicates that he he simply does not understand that unprovenanced antiquities from the market cannot be used as "proof" of anything], has recently published a pretty eye-popping "public information" video: "Are we being LIED TO about ancient history? - Graham Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse. There is a word in the Polish language for this type of thing. 

YouTuber Edutainer thinks it's time for What he calls "Toxic Archaeology" to End [UPDATED]

Over in Texas, USA, Luke Caverns ("Degree in Anthropology: but now an Expeditionary Historian making videos on ancient civilizations")* with 39.2K subscribers on You Tube thinks "It's time for Toxic Archaeology to END", though in talking about it, he comes over pretty toxically himself:

In today’s video, I examine the modern day battlegrounds of archaeology (this platform) & address how Academics can be just as Toxic and petty as what they claim to be fighting against /In this video, I break down an article posted by an archaeologist on X/Twitter refuting the Pre-Dynastic Vase research. This is, in my opinion, how NOT to argue against "Pseudo-Archaeology".

He admits he's writing this on behalf of Matt Beall, his friend, collector and businessman, who bought a stone vase from a certain dealer and whom I allegedly "attack" by questioning whether what he has subsequently done with it actually has much sense [my post  Granite Vase Fantasies: Rubbish In, Rubbish Out - and yes, there are typos in it; previous one on same topic here]. The video is here:

..Posted on You Tube by Luke Caverns May 12, 2024

Those of you who are too busy to watch it all, I'll save you a bit of time, there is a preamble to here, then after saying "I wanted to draw to light (sic) one of the worst examples...") the guy procedes to rather boringly and monotonously read out (almost) my whole post aloud [but without citing his source i.e., posting the LINK to my post]. He stumbles over intonation and a few words, pausing a couple of times to complain he's found some uncorrected mistypings. This goes on to here. Then there is an ad hominem swipe, noting that an archaeological colleague has "a tough time" writing English. The actual nitty-gritty of his video is at the end -  the bit after that. 

It seems he's running out of things to talk about, just a month ago (Mar 30, 2024) he published another ad hominem hit-piece article aimed at somebody else whose ideas he came across on the Internet, "Explaining why Billy Carson is wrong on Ancient America" ("I believe that 90%+ of the people in the in this ancient civ community are genuine, curious independent researchers" - 12,141 views  Mar 30, 2024). I have no idea who Billy Carson is, but Caverns' spiel is very similar in format to his "break down" of my text - except, mercifully, he does not read Carson's texts out aloud too. Anyway, he starts with an over-theatrical sigh, before focussing on  grammar-police castigation about spelling of Maya and it goes downhill from there. Get a life.

For the rfecord, I'll just address a couple of the comments Caverns made about my blog post:

1) He says he does not believe that friend Matt Beall is mistaken and that he does not believe the vase in question is a modern fake because... "there would be a duplicate". I do not really understand the reasoning here. The originals if one of a group deposited in a tomb or used in a palace would more likely be made in sets for storage etc, a fake could be a one-off. In the same way as a lathe-turned wooden bowl could be. What's the problem? Did Mr Caverns do lathe-turning in his woodwork classes at school? Did his bowl look like the one the other boy before him produced? (Apart from his of course being the most perfect, having no mistakes, no doubt.) The fact the same lathe is used does not mean (of course) that every object turned on it would be a duplicate of the one made before. Bonkers.

He also says that in his opinion, it is not a fake because "so many ["tens of thousands"] were dug up" - yes lots of things have been dug up and dispersed from ancient Egypt and the classical world in general - so by Luke Caverns' reasoning,  there will be very few fakes of any artefacts like that on today's market, oil lamps, Greek vases, terracotta figurines, shabtis, scarabs, faience amulets - anything. Yes? I beg to differ. The market is full of fakes, some sold by dealers with shiny galleries and expensive suits.

Above all, whatever Mr Caverns thinks, it is not "pseudoscientific" (sic) to point out that given the current state of the antiquities market, an artefact that cannot be tied to an excavated context (grounded) is "probably fake".

On the basis of what he says, I would question what Mr Caverns understands as a pseudo-scientific approach. My approach here is source-critical. Where does that evidence come from, can it be associated with 100% certainty with the archaeological record? Mr Caverns on the other hand does not bother about that, he says  "there is an insane amount of artifacts up on these legal markets prior to the late 1900s that you can still buy today and nobody's looking at them and saying oh those are probably fake". So his is not source critical, more like wishful thinking. But that is not what we can base conclusions on. 

In any case, I'd like to see him define "insane numbers". Most big London auction houses can include about two of these vessels in a big antiquities sale, that (and their price) does not mean that if they are on that part of the market, they are two-a-penny. Maybe Mr Caverns is happy to look at them and nod his head that they are "probably real", the discerning buyer would do well to exercise caution when the paperwork is less than complete. Big auction house have expertise that 'should' cut out the fakes, but ... I happen to have my own thoughts on that. [caveat emptor and all that].    Let's leave aside the legality of a market that handles items without gettimng the paperwork that show an object has been acquired and moved between countries fully licitly, but Mr Caverns, if the object was "dug up in the 1900s", how do you know you are buying one dug up in the 1900s if you've not got documentation of the collecting history instead of assumptions or a dealers nod-nod-wink-wink-assurances? 

Note that Mr Caverns omits in his reading the loaded sentence, why does he do that? Is it because he understands "what the author might have had in mind", or because he dismisses what he does not understand, because he's not read any discussion of the antiquities market on my blog except to pick holes in the spelling? Huh!

Mr Beall claims his item is OK, both in terms of autheticity and legality because he has a nice printed COA that says it came from a specific, named, collection. This is interesting, because that collection is well-known, and also something is known about the way that particular owner marked his objects. I have unsuccessfully been trying to get an answer from the new owner whether the vase that he has has that feature - and he has steadfastly refused to answer. The ABSENCE of that feature would raise further questions about where the dealer got that vase. So if Mr Beall is sure that the COA accurately gives the penultimate stage of the collection history, let's hear about how it is labelled.

2) Mr Caverns thinks it is nit-picking (sic) to question whether the raw material of an object claiming to be an ancient Egyptian sone vase is actually from Egypt. It is quite a distinctive stone with some big felspar crystals (that as we see in the video when the walls of the vessel are thin and you shine a light inside are translucent... uh.... could that, uh...?). I point out that such a stone should therefore have an identifiable quarry source somewhere (you know, archaeology looks at technology and raw material sources, and yes, we start off with simple visual comparison whether it be flint, stone axe material or building stone). Ancient Egyptian hardstone quarries were in the deserts (Western or mostly Eastern) and organizing quarrying and transport of the materials was not easy. We also know quite a lot about the quarries, it has been quite well studied. Since I gave a link that suggests that the main outcrops of rose granites in use in Egypt do not have the same macroscopic petrology as that vase, I'd say the onus is on the guy who claims it is an ancient Egyptian product, if he wants us to believe him, to show us where that raw material comes from. That is not nitpicking, it is a fundamental issue. 

3) The storerooms under and around the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara are NOT a "pre-dynastic" context.   

4) Mr Caverns says: "I agree with Matt that there's not really a lot of material in here I mean what did he say, you don't have providence for it so therefore we cannot take it seriously at all, even though there are tens of thousands of other artifacts found in Egypt that look almost exactly like this? If I had a little alabaster figure that supposed, that somehow had some really precise cuts on it but I could couldn't I couldn't produce where exactly it came from because it was looted in the late 1700s, I don't really know that anybody would come after me saying that no this 100% did not come from Egypt because it's probably more in favor that it is real than it is not real cause there's such an abundance of them out there and I'm with Matt on this one". [BTW alabaster - gypsum - is quite soft] To me, it seems Mr Caverns and his mate Matt, miss the point. There is not supposed to be any material, I make just one simple point, if Mr Beall cannot demonstrate that the vessel is from an ancient context, from an archaeological /historical point of view, it does not matter how nicely it is made. That's all, yet he's making a huge meal out of trying to explain aeaway the issue. I do not get the point he is making about an unprovenenced figurine, it has as much evidential value as an unprovenaced vase, the alleged finger bone of St Vincent, or Cabrera's Ica stones. 

The rest of his text (11.31 on) seems to me to be full of the ad hominems he (falsely) accuses me of using, he questions the "thoroughness" (or alleged lack of thoroughness) of my research as an archaeologist, speculates about my "personal life",  and so on. He ends with: "articles like this from a professional are just unacceptable and it's very juvenile".  That told me, eh? 

UPDATE 14.05.2024
* Mr "Spellchecker" Caverns has now got rid of the meaningless pretentious crap, it now reads: "I'm Luke Caverns. With a degree in Anthropology, I have taken to Education-entertainment to continue my studies of Early Civilization. "

And if you were wondering, the figure lurking behind him in the dark seems to be a "Mutant Ninja Turtle" cosplay oufit (!). Seems appropriate. 

And, the collector joins in, suggesting Caverns was writing-to-order ("I expected [when?] it to be a lot more harsh than this"):

@mattbealllimitless 1 day ago
Thanks Luke, really good conversation! The guy who wrote that baseless hit piece is fine, he probably just has unprocessed childhood trauma. Honestly, I expected it to be a lot more harsh than this. And it will probably get there. I could have responded to flint in a more mature way, and I regret that and am going to message him now to apologize. It’s possible he’s right and it was made with chisels without a turning device

It’s a great discussion, hopefully we can make progress. I’ll keep sharing data, hopefully we can get some museum pieces CT scanned if the interest from the gen pop gets big enough. It’s a fun project. Lots more to come! Thanks for the level headed comments, appreciate your thoughts. It’s different once you see them and handle them right? Anyways, thanks again

Keep drumm ing up that "interest from the gen pop" going, get more kliks and LOLs... Just below it: 

@oak1550 1 day ago
I love to imagine there was an ancient lost civilization, I shouldn't be ridiculed for wanting realistic answers for an obviously lost technology.

"Lost" as in using a lathe to make a turned stone object - like a baluster for example? Mr Caverns reckons we should be discussing real archaeology with these people, really, but where to start? The fact that he starts the whole "expose" with "yesterday I was scouring the modern-day  battlegrounds of archaeology on X formerly known as Twitter" suggests that he does not consider publications, conferences, seminars to be where archaelogy is thrashed out, but only is interested in the social media. Where to start in a discussion with people whoe main background comes from such sources? 

Discussing Artefact Provenance

Expeditionary Historian making videos on ancient civilizations

In the post above, I respond to Luke Caverns' reaction to me pointing out that in discussing archaeological artefacts, provenance is important; ending: "articles like this from a professional are just unacceptable and it's very juvenile".  That told me. Anyway, I was glad to see I am not the only archaeologist who thinks context is important, and there are problems in using artefacts from the market as a source (Flint Dibble @FlintDibble 6h):

A few notes on this. Yes, people have been looking at the antiquities market forever and revealing how many fakes are there. Go follow Erin Thompson (artcrimeprof). She has many, many threads on the fakes and fake certificates on the market. As well as looted material. This is a big deal. Archaeologists have stopped studying material without a context because it is unreliable. And we are holding people who do these scans to the same bar.

It is scientific to say that if you are making a big claim about the past that the evidence you use needs to be demonstrably reliable. It needs to be proven to be archaeological in nature and not possibly a forgery. Most academic journals ethically wouldnt even publish these stone vessels from the art market whether I submitted the paper or unchartedx. Studying these sorts of materials is a big no no and it's one of the points I'm trying to teach my following (including you)

In fact, the ethics behind this are one of the largest reasons to argue against it on Twitter.

I see pseudoarchaeologists supporting the purchase of antiquities. This one was supposedly certified as legal. But most others aren't. The one unchartedx put in a video. Nope.

Most objects without provenance on the antiquities market are either recently looted (illegal) or forgeries. Many of us are working to educate the public about this issue. If everyone goes and buys an 'Egyptian stone vessel' from who knows where. That either supports forgers or looters. This is bad and we want people to be aware of these problems

Ditto with breaking and entering on archaeology sites. This is bad and harmful and illegal

I don't fight pseudoarchaeology for shits and giggles. I try to educate people about archaeological ethics and to have a more respectful attitude towards cultural heritage around the world. It's not just there for fun speculation but it's relevant and matters. And Paul's blog is largely about the antiquities market and looting. He is an expert in it. To make light of these topics and that expertise shows a big hole in your thinking, Luke. These topics matter

Last point, Luke. You talk about an 'army of academics' in the replies... wow, they are dwarfed by the army of alternative folks who flood my mentions with real nastiness. Call me nastier names than one could imagine. And then screenshot and make fun of me for blocking them for being nasty

Same goes for US coin collectors and dealers, US antiquities activists, US metal detectorists. But UK metal detectorists are in a league of their own. On top of the abuse have been physical threats, both with a history going back more than two decades (and in Britain, archaeologists do not criticise detectorists, but pat them on the back, say "well done", and pay them a reward for digging stuff up from archaeological sites). Then the Polish ones, I challenge Mr Caverns to get an online translator onto some of the stuff they have been writing about all of my colleagues, despite fruitless years of trying to bridge the gap with the ones that want to search legally and responsibly. Maybe he could do that before next time writing proposing as some kind of a fresh new idea "hey guys, group hug, let's just work together".

Graham and Holly Take on Archaeology

 

                     Holly Lasko Skinner, pen for sale

.

Above, I discussed the YouTube debunker of psedoscience Miniminuteman and his series of "Awful archaeology" videos . As noted there, one of them was his major effort concerning a recent well-produced blockbuster six-part Netflix series "Ancient Apocalypse" written and presented by Graham Hancock. Rossi's videos were titled: "I Watched Ancient Apocalypse So You Don't Have To" (Part 1), (part 2), and (part 3) which have some 4mln+ views despite their length. I've watched them (and the Netflix series) and think Rossi has provided a good evidence-based critique of the programme in an entertaining format. Also showing that you can produce good TV with a much lower budget than Netflix expended on making the original film.  

Recently there was also a debate on the 'Jo Rogan podcast' between Hancock and archaeologist Dr Flint Dibble that also was based around an evidence-based presentation that was confronted with Hancock's suppositions, "what ifs" and "looks-like" meanderings about a hypothetical/(imaginary) "Lost Civilisation" in which Hancock emerged rather badly and weakly. Hancock objects to this kind of writing about the past without a strict theoretical methodology being treated, not as legitimate archaeology [the word after all means just 'study of the past'] but something that apes the way that enquiry is conducted today - in other words it is a para-archaeology, a pseudo-archaeology. There was a very distasteful moment in the middle of the debate when Hancock tried to react to it having been pointed out that Diffusionist explanations of cultural change brought about by "superior" cultures "bringing the benefits of civilisation" to "inferior" ones willing to acknowledge their position by adopting teh new models is at its core a racist one. Hancock apparently does not accept /understand this, though it is commonplace in discussions of archaeological theory. 

On 19th April 2023 on Graham Hancock's personal website a huge verbose text appeared  called: "Will the real Pseudoarchaeologists Please Stand Up! (sic) The institution of North American archeology is racist to the core and must be “rebuilt from the ground up” say antiracist archaeologists". Wow. Much of the last third of this is a hit-job aimed at.... Flint Dibble. Coincidence? The text is poorly-organised and thus pretty unreadable, it is a jumble of assorted quotes by various people taken out of their context that the author (AI??) was unable to into coherent text that actually gets to the point. The author of this text fails to grasp that, as in any discipline, there are factions in US archaeology, critical of others. This does not mean that what they say and postulate can be used to generalise about all US archaeology at home and abroad. Also is US archaeology more, or less, "racist" than any other segment of US society, a country where allegedly black people fear being killed in the street by a cop just because they are black?

According to Graham Hancock's website the author of that text, one Holly Lasko Skinner, "is a freelance writer, researcher and editor based in London, UK [...] with a first class degree in history". So far so good, but we also learn: "as a strong believer in social justice, she's worked with Graham Hancock to decolonise and democratise our understanding of the past since 2015". Wow. It is unclear what form that took, as there do not seem to be many publications on that, or any other, theme online, at least. 

But then, a new text by Ms Skinner has just appeared on Graham Hancock's webpage, 18 days later, on May 7th. This was prefaced by a tweet by Hancock: "Thanks to brilliant freelance researcher Holly Lasko Skinner, who I've worked with for many years, for looking into this phenomenon at a time when my energies have been focussed elsewhere". This "phenomenon" was an ad hominem attack called  "Investigating YouTuber Miniminuteman" (Graham Hancock website 7th May 2024).

Investigating YouTuber Miniminuteman
The archaeological community have upheld Rossi as a bastion of archaeological integrity. This article investigates who Miniminuteman really is.[...]
Ch. 1: "Milo Rossi is not an archaeologist" [...]
Ch. 2: “Milo Rossi is a pseudoarchaeologist" [...]
[...] Ch. 5: “Miniminuteman is a conspiracy theorist”

I was not aware that anybody has been "holding Rossi up as a bastion (sic) of archaeological integrity" - where did she read that? Anyway Holly Lasko Skinner has either self-appointed herself or been asked by the website owner to "investigate" him.

 This is a nasty text. I understand that Mr Rossi's online persona may not be to everyone's taste, and that his arguments and style in which he presents them may be uncomfortable to a certain body of writers/ media producers, but I think that Mr Hancock and his hired proxy pen have gone much too far here. Furthermore, to me, this text gives the impression of the outpourings of an obsessed stalker. Look at the effort she's gone to to dig up the dirt on this guy - hours and hours of research. 

Again we get the same verbose mudslinging composed of large chunks of quotes from other sources, all selected with the sole intent, far from "investigating" a subject, of blackening his character. Yeah, we all of us make mistakes (I disagree about the one with the archaeologist getting precious about surface-found sherds by the way) but this is so obviously done with the sole intent of discrediting an uncomfortable critic.  

In all of this, there is not a single case of Ms Skinner actually addressing the points about the lack of evidence for this imaginary "Lost Civilisation" - but if she was "investigating" the views of Mr Rossi, that is exactly what should be here. And that is exactly what she has avoided doing. Is Mr Rossi an archaeologist? I have no idea what his formal qualifications are, and neither do I care. 

As far as I am concerned: "an archaeologist is somebody who applied archaeological methodology to interpret the physical remains of the past" (I am aware that this is NOT a good definition - because it raises the question of what that "archaeological methodology" is, but then what is NOT an archaeological methodology, on the one hand also needs defining, on the other perhaps not). Now, I'm pretty grumpy and critical about what is good archaeology. It seems to me that Milo Rossi is applying archaeological reasoning (grounded in a knowledge, appreciation of and experience with this methodology) to the questions he is discussing. So yes, even if he was a landscape gardener or pharmacist by avocation, what he is doing here is by that definition archaeology. I have no problems with that. And I do not give a tinker's cuss for what Holly Lasko Skinner thinks about that. Whether you, dear reader thinks it is relevant is up to you. But base it on what Rossi says and not what she says. Go to the source, a mouse-click away.  

And Hancock's image as an affable articulate guy "just asking questions" and "just trying to find out" bursts here like a bubble with his publication of this text.  

 

Milo Rossi: You Tube Pseudoscience Commentator "Miniminuteman" [UPDATED]

The popular You Tube personality "Miniminuteman" (Boston, Massachusetts-based Milo Rossi) came to my attention through the recent discussion on Graham Hancock's controversial (in more ways than one) Netflix series "Ancient Apolcalypse". In point of fact, he came to my attention from Hancock's ungraceful reaction to having his theories discussed in this way (see the post below). Rossi has produced 181 You Tube videos (totalling 465,772,185 views), has 1.85M subscribers and seems to be doing very well for himself. He describes himself as "Archaeologist, Environmental Scientist, Author, Conspiracy Debunker". He started his activities on TikTok, where he has six million followers. 

 He does a lot of stuff, most of it concentrates on debunking pseudoscience and misinformation. What interests us here is the series of "Awful archaeology" videos that he's been doing since 21 Dec 2021. Mr Hancock and his acolytes may have been annoyed by the three videos "I Watched Ancient Apocalypse So You Don't Have To" (Part 1), (part 2), and (part 3) which have some 4mln+ views despite their length. I've watched them and think they are very good examples of the genre and show what we, archaeologists, should be providing more of. 

 
 For the record, in my opinion, Milo Rossi does an excellent job presenting the difference between reasoned, evidence-based, argument and pseudoscience. To be totally honest, as somebody from a somewhat different generation and background, at the beginning I was rather put off by his long hair, the biker image, the swearing, and loud in-your-face American brashness [rather too reminiscent to me of a North American guy I once had the misfortunee to share a flat with], but... as I watched the videos and was drawn into the narrative (and his online 'persona'), these prejudices of mine became easier to overlook. 

Rossi is articulate, has some good arguments, does not suffer fools and grifters lightly, but above all he is genuinely funny and entertaining. Rossi can also sometimes surprise with a totally fresh and sober take on some of the tired old tropes marshalled as their "proof" by pseudoscientists. He provides links to where the viewer can check what he said or find further information. His videos are presented to look very low-key and 'home-made' and personal, done on a shoestring, and sometimes look like chaos ... but he actually seems to spend a very long time preparing for them, they are carefully scripted, and overall strike a really good balance between providing information/ asking pertinent questions and sheer entertainment. They are IMO eminently watchable. He can produce a two-hour video on some abstruse points and get an audience to settle down and watch it and not get bored. That is a gift. Oh, and he has a big ginger cat who sometimes makes an appearance.

Take a look and decide for yourself. This one somebody sent me a link to is a good sampler of the presentation style (though less visually attractive than others, and cat not present).*  Maybe not to everyone's taste, but he obviously is reaching a wide audience who do want the information presented in this way and benefitting from what he presents. 

Nota bene, there are a lot of producers of similar content of various quality, but it is worth drawing attention to the fact that this kind of popular-science debunking of pseudo/para-science is largely a US genre, British archaeologists, for example, don't do this nearly so often. To be honest, I cannot imagine a single Polish archaeologist I know (and I know quite a lot of them) who would even attempt something like this - or be able to carry it off.  There are not a lot of them in social media in general. 

* one segment of this makes reference to the way that pseudoarchaeology is used to attract readers to Russian misinformation dissemination sites showing that this kind of clickbait has a more sinistewr role than just confusing people about the past. 

UPDATE 13.05.2024

THIS I think is well worth a watch right through to the end: Pseudoarchaeology and the Pseudoscience Pipeline - Milo Rossi LIVE at Virginia Tech

More on those Hyper-Precise "Ancient Lathe-Turned Vessels" from the Antiquities Market

From the PACHI Blog:

More on those Hyper-Precise "Ancient Lathe-Turned Vessels" from the Antiquities Market

The US collector who bouught an "antiquity" on the market and assumes it is what the COA says it is has now begun to get abusive when evidence is pointed out that he cannot accept:

Matt Beall @MattbLimitless
There we have it folks, Flint Chisel Dibble. By hand lol! That’s hilarious. The tool marks on the interior don’t indicate that it was made by hand. They indicate that it was turned on a sophisticated lathe[...]. Hopefully that’s the most ridiculous assumption you’ve had in a long time. This is to within a microscopic amount of perfect roundness. Of course it was turned and not made by hand. [...] Aren’t you a Greek Bronze Age person? Have you ever handled even one of these to have a clue how they were made? 12:31 AM · May 11, 2024

then

Ryan @RWrxghtyyy · 18m
He doesn’t understand it because he doesn’t have the trained eyes to see the evidence of machinery in this artefact. As a engineer and like many other engineers we all say this is machined by a CNC with precision. It’s only the untrained archeologists that are in denial.

wardamnjay @wardamnjay · 1h
Those vases are racist aren't they Flint

and it just goes on:

JeklHunter

@Jekl84

·

May 9

you cannot explain because you are a retarded tribalist who is pissed that people don't respect your overpriced piece of paper and that you may be wrong in your beliefs; so you are lashing out against those that make you look like a fool

then

Flint Dibble @FlintDibble
1. Your stone vessel from the art market has no archaeological context. So tell me how you know when it was made?[...] I'm done with this conversation. Good luck. I hope you read more actual archaeology and stop buying looted artifacts

reply:

Matt Beall @MattbLimitless · 1h
Flint, thanks for the advice but you dig up people’s graves for a living and you steal their possessions from their final resting place. I’ve purchased these legally, after they’ve been looted by archaeology.

I guess it is some special kind of uninformed that considers that anything bought from a London antiquities dealer with a COA must have been exccavated by archaeologists who then sold them off onto the market. This is why (and the ad homimnem abuse) there is little point in discussing the finer points of archaeology with people that do not actually understand some basic things about source criticism.

Meanwhile:

Bastet @Bastet545169547 · May 8
That particular vase does not look authentic. The sharp vertical top/lip doesn't match any from the pre-dynastic period. They tend to be either rounded or turn outwards - never straight vertical. I've looked at countless vases in the Arnold Meijer collection and none have this.

Bastet @Bastet545169547
The link below is an excellent resource of AE vases. I've pretty much viewed every one and none have that sharp vertical top. None either have such sharp "perfect" features. Hand work and imperfections are obvious in pretty much all the originals.

arnoldmeijer.nl Stone Vessels
Predynastic to
the Middle Kingdom From the art market - 988 images
Museum collections - 460 images
12:09 AM · May 9, 2024

and 

and

Bastet @Bastet545169547 · May 9
[...] The vases this rich dude with the channel has snapped up all look very modern to me. The ones he analyses at least. They all seem a little too perfect compared to the originals.

Obviously, in order to provide convincing evidence to support his thesis of a "lost technology" Mr Beall needs to get access to excavated (grounded) examples - but he could face an uphill battle isf all he can do when challenged is get abusive and aggressive.

Granite Vase Fantasies: Rubbish In, Rubbish Out

From the PACHI Blog:

Granite Vase Fantasies: Rubbish In, Rubbish Out

The guys claiming on social media that super-accurate measurements with extremely sophisticated machinery of 'ancient' stone vases with sophisticated geometry and technical parameters are evidence of some Lost Ancient Knowledge are back. We've just been throuigh all this.  

Matt Beall @MattbLimitless The CT scan report on thin walled granite artifacts is back! The X & Y axis of the lip and width vary by less than 1/1000 of an inch, making it perfectly round. Also, IT WAS LATHED. the surface deviation proves that. This is the first time that we can conclusively prove that with data (more data will be released in the coming weeks/months). So either [sic]
1.) The Egyptians made this and we don’t know how or what tools they used (same as pyramids/serapeum etc)
2 a more ancient civilization made this and the other precision artifacts
3 it’s a modern forgery

Previously, we had pointed out that these vases could not be considered evidence because they were unprovenanced (ungrounded) items from the antiquities market and thus were probably fakes (so nothing would be surprising in them being produced using sophisticated equipment equivalent to modern machine tools because they probably were produced using modern machine tools). Now this guy's showing unprovenanced (ungrounded) items from the antiquities market with COAs (!) "Here’s the certificate of authenticity " of the one features in the video.  Read it. Who's going to tell him?

I'd also like to know which Egyptian rose granite is this? it does not look like any of the types currently commercially available from Egypt. So if there are no more outcrops that could have been exploited, where did the raw material come from, how and when?

The Teddy Kollek collection is a storied provenance. We are told that some 56 years ago a member of the Barakat family bought it, kept it in a storeroom for half a century before selling it to the current owner. Is there any Israeli export documentation showing how it got to London? The question is, can it be proven that it was from the Teddy Kollek collection? Mr Beall refuses to answer my question of whether there is anything written on this vessel or an old collectors' label. A shame. Then again, if Mr Kollek (who collected mainly Israeli pieces) acquired this from somebody, how did he ascertain that it was an authentic antiquity <1968? 

Mr Beall lightly mentions that in his opinion, the dealer he bought it from might have been mixed up in illegal activity. Of course I do not believe that for a second, but here for the record is what he wrote, clutching at straws to make it seem more likely this vessel is ancient:

"There was the 6 day war in 1967 where Israel occupied Egypt and is said to have stolen artifacts. Barakat was based in Jerusalem at that time and would have been THE place to offload the loots. I’d be happy to return it to Egypt if it can be verified as genuine and stolen. A few of my others have 1968 Provence and Uzi Narkiss as prior owner. He was the general who occupied Egypt on the ground".

Look at this: 

William Wallace Welker @Will_W_Welker ·13h
Nice to have proof but anybody who has used a lathe and examined these jars already knew that. Modern forgery is unlikely due to the extremely high number of these jars that have been found.

Mmmm. There were a lot of them, but one cannot assume that the undocumented ones on the antiquities market are the same as the body of examples in excavation storerooms (!). These are two separate bodies of material and cannot be studied in the same way. Mr Beall is so convinced that he would be able to prove something if he had access to properly-excavated (grounded) material that, unlike the "orphan" and "floating" material on the antiquities market, cannot be a modern product. Then why not persevere and put together, in collaboration with other specialists, a research project to get that access, instead of faffing about with privately-owned "samples" of unknown provenance? 

UPDATE  9th May 2024

Both he and his 'alternative pasts' pals seem annoyed that somebody is discussing his ideas (referring to my tweet linking to this post):

Matt Beall @MattbLimitless
Help me out here David. Why was my post rubbish? Why was this repost worth reposting, you didn’t comment on it and I personally didn’t see anything material in it. I didn’t get anything out of it except anger and frustration and division. I am suggesting that there are three options. I am open to all three. Can we stay open minded and work together to get some answers? 11:25 PM · May 8, 2024

Ahsam Koji @AshamKoji · 5h
Matt, he is unable to critise your methodology or hypothesis only providence (sic). Like Anyextee who will slander you for encroaching on “their” territory. Rather than collaborate or offer ad hominem free criticism they fear your will ‘steal’ market share. Tour Tickets / Add Views

I beg to disagree, I think there is something material in the post... Yes, three options were proposed on the basis of what he saw as "evidence", but Ockham's razor reduces it to one. If you cannot document that the object really was made in pre-dynastic times, all the rest goes out of the window. It is as simple as that. I am not sure what part of that would be difficult to understand for a person of normal intelligence. Rubbish data in, rubbish conclusions out. Get better samples to test your theories on, then we can discuss 'options'.