Key Takeaways

  • Advances in computing power helped scientists create a method for dating pottery purported to be ancient.
  • The method takes advantage of the fact that the firing and cooling of clay materials creates a virtual time stamp within their structures based on the orientation of Earth's magnetic field through time. 
  • Now that the method is established, the researchers intend to apply it to artifacts of debated authenticity in museums all over the world. 

Museums around the world now have a new tool to distinguish real ancient clay artifacts from fakes. 

A research team at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, led by postdoctoral scholar Yoav Vaknin, found a way to distinguish the magnetism that clay materials acquire over time from the magnetism those materials acquired the day they were made. The researchers found a significant difference between modern and ancient artifacts in the temperature needed to erase the magnetism acquired since the original firing.

“I hope that our new method will be useful for museum curators, who wish to display only authentic artifacts, for archaeologists and historians, studying the societies which created them and for law enforcement authorities in their effort to eliminate illicit antiquities trade, which involves looting archaeological sites and forgery,” said Vaknin.

Source: https://today.ucsd.edu/story/researchers-develop-method-to-tell-authentic-artifacts-from-fakes