To be successful, archaeological frauds ordinarily need not be clever, well conceived, or convincing - indeed,
Figure 1 The Cardiff Giant, in situ, in October 1869 on the Newell farm. Stub Newell appears beside the giant in the pit (Courtesy, New York State Historical Association).
They may be transparently unconvincing to professional scientists and yet still be successful. What is key to the success of an archaeological fraud - in fact, it is at the core of much of pseudoarchaeology - is that it fulfills a need, it meets an expectation, it provides a desired solution, or it supports a preconceived notion about the human past.
For example, the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869 was thoroughly unconvincing and clumsy, at least in the minds of those scholars who investigated it (Figure 1).
Ostensibly the petrified remnants of a ten-foot-tall man who, it was suggested, had been an inhabitant of upstate New York before the biblical deluge, the giant was immediately declared a humbug by palaeontologists, geologists, and even sculptors. For example, geologist J. F. Boynton of the University of Pennsylvania examined the giant and pointed out that it could in no way be interpreted as the mineralized imprint of a human being. Boynton concluded that the giant was not the human equivalent of a petrified tree trunk, but merely a carving done in gypsum, a soft rock which, based on the erosion seen on its surface, he suggested could not have been in the ground for much more than a year. Noted sculptor Eratus Dow Palmer identified marks left by the tools of whoever had sculpted the giant, concluding that it was entirely artificial. Upon his examination, Othniel C. Marsh, one of the most highly regarded American palaeontologists of the nineteenth century, declared the giant to be nothing more than a remarkable fake. This scientific and artistic skepticism, unfortunately, was for naught. The public embraced the notion that on a small farm in a rural community in the state of New York, a simple farmer digging a well had unearthed proof of biblical stories of giants.
StuB Newell, the farmer who discovered the giant, showed remarkable business sense when, the day after its discovery, he erected a circus tent over the in situ remains and began charging people 50 cents to view it. Though precise attendance figures were not recorded, later testimony indicates that in the week after its 16th of October discovery, an average of several hundred people daily visited the farm to view the giant. The number of visitors swelled to more than 2000 on each day of the first weekend after its unveiling. At that point, a bit more than one week after its discovery, a consortium of Syracuse businessmen purchased a three-quarter interest in the giant from Mr. Newell for $30 000, hoping to exploit more fully its potential as a tourist attraction.
Of course, the entire thing had been a fake and general rumors to that effect, along with Mr. Newell’s apparent inability to keep quiet about his highly profitable humbug, resulted in a confession by his partner in crime, his cousin, George Hull, who, apparently, had been the brains behind the operation from the outset of the conspiracy. Hull admitted in a later newspaper interview that he had purchased a block of gypsum from an Iowa quarry and shipped it to Chicago where sculptors produced, at Mr. Hull’s request, the image of a giant, naked, recumbent, man. Shipped to New York in a crate labeled “unfinished marble’’, Hull arranged with his cousin to bury the sculpture on the farm where it remained interred, almost precisely as Professor Boynton had suggested, for one year before its ‘‘discovery’’.
It is clear that public acceptance of the giant was based, largely, on its seeming to lend support to biblical accounts of antediluvian giant human beings (see Biblical Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology). When local ministers referred in their sermons to the ‘‘Goliath of Cardiff’’, they were not making a simple analogy to Goliath of Gotha; they were stating forcefully that the remains of the Cardiff Giant furnished archaeological evidence that a biblical story was, if only indirectly, based on fact. Ironically, George Hull’s inspiration for the giant was religiously based as well. Hull was an atheist and the idea for the giant was born after a heated argument with a minister concerning the literal truth of stories told in the Bible. Hull freely admitted that, based on his conversation with the minister, he saw an opportunity to exploit gullible believers who would want to accept evidence supporting a Bible story, and who would be willing to pay for the privilege of seeing such evidence. The giant currently resides as an exhibit at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York, were visitors can continue to pay to see the marvelous petrified man supposedly from before Noah’s Flood (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 The Cardiff Giant in his current circumstance, at the Farmers Museum, in Cooperstown, New York (KL Feder).
World History
