Name Oscar Muscarella | Role Archaeologist | |
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Education University of Pennsylvania Books The Lie Became Great, Bronze and Iron: Ancient N, The catalogue of ivories, Phrygian fibulae from Gord, Unexcavated objects and ancient N | ||
Oscar White Muscarella (b. 1931) is an American archaeologist and former research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he worked for over 40 years before retiring in 2009. His specialty is the antique art and archeology of the Near East, especially ancient Persia. Muscarella is an untiring opponent of robbery excavations, and some regard him as the "conscience of the industry". Dr. Muscarella received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965.
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Early life
He was born Oscar White Jr. and lived with his parents and brother in the Bronx. His father worked as an elevator operator, and the family was poor. In 1939 his mother married Sam Muscarella, Muscarella adopted Oscar and his brother. They lived in lower Manhattan and later in the Bronx, his father seldom making enough money to feed his family. At times they survived on government assistance programs. He attended a Catholic school, Mary Help of Christians, then Public School 104, and then Junior High 40 in the Bronx. Teachers encouraged him to take the tests to qualify for Stuyvesant High in Manhattan. He passed and went there instead of the local high school. At Stuyvesant he joined the Archaeology Club. While living in Manhattan, Muscarella had joined the Gramercy Boy’s Club and fell in love with the books he found in the club library. (In 2000 among several people to whom he dedicated his book, The Lie Made Great, was Miss Jones, the Club's librarian, "my first and best librarian.") During his high school years in the Bronx, Muscarella contributed to family support by shining shoes, working at a ball park and after 14 working as an usher in a local theater. He started university at NYU but for his second year transferred to CCNY as an evening session student, working during the day. He graduated in 1955. At City College of New York, Muscarella was president in 1953 of the Evening Session History Society.
Fight against the antiquities trade
Muscarella sees rich collectors of illegal antiquities and also museums as greatly harming archeology. By offering such great sums for important artifacts, they create great incentives for people to hastily plunder sites in order to find the most marketable artifacts, and also encourage forgeries. Since these people have no incentive to take the care that professional archaeologists would, they may end up destroying a great many of the site's artifacts. Large parts of culture history, it is claimed, have been destroyed in this manner. According to Muscarella, museums have been complicit in accepting "bazaar archeology", invented proveniences for objects that are either illegally dug up or forged. Curators are not encouraged to point out awkward questions about objects in their collections, or being bought, donated or loaned for exhibition.
For example Muscarella wrote in 1977 on the Ziwiye hoard, supposedly found in 1947 in Iranian Kurdistan, pointing out that none of the items were excavated under archaeological conditions, but passed through the hands of dealers. He concludes that "there are no objective sources of information that any of the attributed objects actually were found at Ziwiye, although it is probable that some were", and that the objects have no historical and archaeological value as a group".
Forgeries
Muscarella has gained some notoriety in his attempts to unmask certain important artifacts as forgeries, including some in the collection of the Metropolitan. His book The Lie became Great. The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures (2000) was a blistering attack, which included a long catalogue of specific objects in museums, private collections, and the art market which he said were modern forgeries. Some entire categories of objects were claimed to be all forgeries. The book was well received by reviewers in academic journals, several of whom concluded that it should be "required" or "compulsory" reading for those in the field.
In 2003 he was reported in The Times in London, in a story by Peter Watson, to have "labelled as mostly fake" the Oxus Treasure in the British Museum. However he was attacked in a letter to The Times by the Director of the Metropolitan, Philippe de Montebello, who said Muscarella, a long-standing critic of museums' tolerance and even encouragement of the trade in illegal antiquities, only remained there because of the "exigencies of academic tenure". Montebello was himself criticised for suppressing debate. In an article on the Oxus Treasure published in 2003 Muscarella goes nothing like as far, but does fiercely attack the assumed unity of the treasure and the narratives of its provenience, and is sceptical of the authenticity of some of the votive plaques.