A front-page unfold within the Excelsior newspaper from Nov. 8, 1927, options archaeologists at paintings within the box with the headline ‘What the learned commission found at the Glozel excavations.’
Excelsior/BnF Gallica
The archaeologists pictured have been participants of a world crew assembled to evaluate the authenticity of a exceptional web site in France’s Auvergne area.
Claude and Émile Fradin’s circle of relatives first noticed the artifacts on their land.
Agence Meurisse
3 years earlier than, farmers plowing their land at a spot referred to as Glozel had come throughout what appeared to be a prehistoric tomb. Excavations by way of Antonin Morlet, an novice archaeologist from Vichy, the closest the town of any measurement, yielded a wide variety of surprising gadgets. Morlet started publishing the reveals in past due 1925, right away generating vigorous debate and controversy.
Positive traits of the web site positioned it within the Neolithic generation, roughly 10,000 B.C.E. However Morlet additionally unearthed artifact sorts concept to had been invented hundreds of years later, significantly pottery and, maximum unusually, drugs or bricks with what gave the impression of alphabetic characters. Some students cried foul, together with mavens at the inscriptions of the Phoenicians, the folks concept to have invented the Western alphabet no previous than 2000 B.C.E.
Was once Glozel a surprising to find with the capability to rewrite prehistory? Or used to be it an elaborate hoax? Through past due 1927, the dispute over Glozel’s authenticity had develop into so strident that an out of doors investigation gave the impression warranted.
The Glozel affair now quantities to little greater than a footnote within the historical past of French archaeology. As a historian, I first got here throughout descriptions of it in some histories of French archaeology. With a little bit of investigating, it wasn’t onerous to seek out first-person accounts of the affair.
Examples of the types of inscriptions discovered on the Glozel web site, as recorded by way of pupil Salomon Reinach.
‘Éphémérides de Glozel’/Wikimedia Commons
However it used to be most effective after I started finding out the personal papers of one of the most main recent skeptics of Glozel, an archaeologist and knowledgeable on Phoenician writing named René Dussaud, that I spotted the magnitude and depth of this controversy. After publishing a brief ebook appearing that the so-called Glozel alphabet used to be a mishmash of in the past identified early alphabetic writing, in October 1927 Dussaud took out a subscription to a clipping provider to trace mentions of the Glozel affair; in 4 months he gained over 1,500 clippings, in 10 languages.
The newspaper Le Matin, which vigorously promoted Glozel’s authenticity, even subsidized its personal dig close to the web site, led by way of a journalist.
Le Matin/BnF Gallica
Severe scientists within the trenches
The world fee’s front-page talk over with to Glozel marked a watershed within the controversy, although it didn’t get to the bottom of it completely.
In a painstaking record revealed within the scholarly Revue anthropologique simply earlier than Christmas 1927, the fee recounted the different days of digging it carried out, supplied detailed plans of the web site, described the gadgets it unearthed and moderately defined its conclusion that the web site used to be “not ancient.”
Recovered gadgets displayed within the Fradins’ museum in 1927.
Agence de presse Meurisse/Wikimedia Commons
The record emphasised the significance of right kind archaeological approach. Early on, the commissioners famous that they have been “experienced diggers, all with past fieldwork to their credit,” in several chronological subfields of archaeology. Against this, they famous that the Glozel web site confirmed transparent indicators of a loss of order and approach.
The dignity between true science – what the archaeologists have been practising – and the media gave the impression absolute.
Sensationalist protection, however cautious main points, too
And but issues weren’t so easy.
The chance, obvious on this jocular reference, of shedding the social status afforded them by way of their skilled levels and schooling used to be value taking as it drove house those archaeologists’ devotion to their self-discipline, which their record described as “a daily moral obligation.”
Morlet, a ways left, and the world fee in entrance of the Fradins’ museum in November 1927. Garrod is 3rd from the left.
Agence Meurisse
Skeptical scientists did depend on journalism
In a while after the newsletter of the record, which used to be summarized and excerpted within the day-to-day press, unique excavator Morlet accused Dorothy Garrod, the one girl at the fee, of getting tampered with the web site. A bunch of archaeologists answered on her behalf, explaining what she had in reality been doing and protecting her professionalism – within the press.
On the most elementary degree, media protection recorded the usual running procedures of archaeology and its openness to outdoor scrutiny. This used to be by contrast to Morlet’s excavations, which restricted get admission to most effective to believers within the authenticity of Glozel.
Beneath the watchful eyes of newshounds and photographers, the outdoor archaeologists investigating Glozel knew fairly smartly that they have been engaged in one of those efficiency, one during which their self-discipline, up to this actual discovery, used to be on trial.
Just like the indicators in my community proclaiming that “science is real,” the world fee relied on and sought to reinforce the general public’s self belief within the integrity of medical inquiry. To do this, it wanted the media even whilst expressing a wholesome skepticism about it. It’s a balancing act that persists in lately’s generation of “trusting science.”
