Scientific impostures and their consequences for research : the example of the Eleusinian dossier

The dossier on Eleusinian cult vases has provided an unexpected opportunity to study a well-known but little-researched phenomenon: that of scholarly impostures.

The opportunity for such a confrontation with the phenomenon of impostures was provided by a unique scene, adorning a gold jewel, dating from the "Hellenistic" period. An object published by renowned specialists, exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and belonging to a famous collection, it had escaped intensive examination for half a century. In the end, it turned out to be a modern imposture.

With this fact established, we had to understand the context of the forgery's creation, and seek out the probable artists and brains behind such an invention. This long quest led us down the path of a renowned family of archaeological artists in Greece, to whom research at the turn of the 20th^centuryowes the majority of illustrations, interpretative restorations, reconstructions and replicas of ancient art: the artists Émile Gilliéron, father and son (1850-1924 and 1885-1939). They are more closely associated with Bronze Age archaeology, having worked with Heinrich Schliemann and Arthur Evans, to name but the most famous. Many prehistorians have in the past associated unique objects with these excellent artists, in most cases without definitive conclusions.

Thus, the fact of having identified (at least) two creations forged from scratch within the framework of Eleusinian archaeology, linked without the slightest doubt to Émile Gilliéron père (years 1885-1915), provides an unexpected basis for argumentation, enabling us to establish a dialogue with prehistorians. Coming from another chronological context (Classical-Hellenistic), another culture (Attic-Eleusinian), and expressed in another "artistic language" (figurative and decorative iconography), the process of deconstructing them was able to make use of ancient textual sources, history and iconography.

To better understand this phenomenon, it is imperative to understand the biographies and artistic works of these artists. The "challenge" is to retrace the phases in the establishment of archaeological knowledge in the 19th^century. The dossier presented here is literally "research in the making", and is far from closed; on the contrary, it has only just begun. Its confrontation requires a rich multidisciplinary approach, touching on various aspects of archaeological science, its history and its epistemology. This case study demonstrates the need to revisit the history of our sciences, and the way in which mainstream knowledge was established in the 19th^centuryand has been reproduced ever since. No piece of knowledge can be considered as assuredly well-founded unless the data is regularly subjected to checks, using the research tools of each era. In the digital age, the tricks of the 19th^centuryare vulnerable..