← Back to context

Comment by flimflamm

6 hours ago

What prevents forgers from generating such magnetic fields? That might be worth while if people start to blindly believing that "pottery frozen magnetic fields are not possible to counterfeit". Note that "not possible to counterfeit" is not a claim in the article.

From TFA:

> “So it’s hard for us to be ahead of the forgers since they can read our papers and figure out ways to trick our methods.”

> What prevents forgers from ...

Cost. Same as them fooling carbon dating, electron microscopes, isotope analysis, and a host of other techniques.

Forgery has always been about how cheaply you could make fakes, vs. the odds and consequences of them getting enough scrutiny to be identified as such.

It's one of several techniques they can apply, at least. I for one don't even know why there's a forgery market for ancient pottery, or that there's a market for it.

  • > I for one don't even know why there's a forgery market for ancient pottery

    Because people desire owning ancient pottery and are therefore willing to pay for it.

  • > I for one don't even know why there's a forgery market for ancient pottery

    People have paid top dollar for archeological artifacts for centuries. Humanity lost a lot of knowledge from graverobbers, illegal artifact hunting and unreported thefts of stuff getting exposed after stuff like forest fires.