Oscar White Muscarella

Oscar White Muscarella (b. 1931 in New York) is a US archaeologist and former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His specialty is the antique art and archeology of the Near East. 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.

Fight against the antique trade

Muscarella sees rich collectors and museums as greatly harming archeology. By offering such great sums for important artifacts, they create great incentives for people to hastily excavate sites in order to find the most marketable artifacts. 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.

Forgeries

Muscarella has gained some notoriety in his attempts to unmask certain important artifacts as forgeries (see: The lie became great. The forgery of ancient near eastern cultures. 2000).^[1]

References

• Phrygian fibulae from Gordion. London, Quaritch 1967 (Dissertation 1965)
• The tumuli at Sé Girdan. Second report, in: Metropolitan Museum Journal 4, 1971, p. 5-28.
• (ed.): Ancient art. The Norbert Schimmel collection. Zabern, Mainz 1974
• The Archaeological Evidence for Relations Between Greece and Iran in the First Millennium B.C., in: The Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 9, 1977, p. 31-57.
• Unexcavated Objects and Ancient Near Eastern Art, in: Mountains and Lowlands, L. D. Levine and T. C. Young, Jr. (eds.), Malibu 1977, p. 153-207.
• "Ziwiye" and Ziwiye. The Forgery of a Provenience, in: Journal of Field Archaeology 4, 1977, p. 197-219.
• Urartian bells and Samos . Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 1978
• (ed.): Ladders to Heaven. Art treasures from lands of the Bible. A catalogue of some of the objects in the collection presented by Dr. Elie Borowski to the Lands of the Bible Archaeology Foundation and displayed in the exhibition "Ladders to Heaven / Our Judeo-Christian heritage 500 BC - AD 500", held at the Royal Ontario Museum, June 23 - Oct. 28, 1979. Toronto 1979.
• Unexcavated objects and ancient near eastern art. Addenda. Malibu 1979, ISBN 0-89003-043-X
• The catalogue of ivories from Hasanlu, Iran. Philadelphia, 1980
• Surkh Dum at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A Mini-Report, in: Journal of Field Archaeology 8, 1981, p. 327-351.
• Bronze and iron. Ancient Near Eastern artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York 1988, ISBN 0-87099-525-1
• (ed.): Phrygian Art and Archaeology. Special issue of Source: Notes in the History of Art 7, no. 3/4, New York 1988.
• The Background to the Luristan Bronzes, in: J. Curtis (ed.), Bronzeworking Centres of Western Asia 1000-539 B.C., London 1988, p. 177-192.
• The lie became great. The forgery of ancient near eastern cultures. Groningen, Styx 2000, 539 p., ISBN 90-5693-041-9
• Jiroft and "Jiroft-Aratta". A Review Article of Yousef Madjidzadeh, Jiroft; The Earliest Oriental Civilization, in: Bulletin of the Asia Institute 15, 2005, p. 173-198.
• Bronzes of Luristan, in: Encyclopædia Iranica 2004, p. 478-483.

Interviews

• Suzan Mazur: "Antiquities Whistleblower Oscar White Muscarella. The Whistleblower & The Politics if The Met's Euphronios Purchase: A talk With Oscar White Muscarella.". In: Scoop, 25 December 2005.
• Stefan Koldehoff: "Museums destroy the history of our earth". In: Welt am Sonntag, 29 January 2006 (German)

Footnotes

1. ^ „Met Fakes Unearthed?“ New York Post, February 1, 2001

External links

• Joerg Haentzschel: "Archaeology of the bulldozer. Collectors and museums in the west finance the destruction that antique world." In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wednesday, 3 September 2003, S. 13, No. 202, yr. 59 (German)
• "No Ransom - part II", Scoop, 9 February 2006, also as audio file

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Name	Muscarella, Oscar White
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Date of birth	1931
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