Something strange was going on with the Stone Age tools in the Museon in The Hague. Archaeologists saw this when they put flint tools from the museum under the microscope in 2018. It lacked the traces of weathering that should have been on it. Normally these types of tools shine after being in the ground for thousands of years, but here many of the pieces were lackluster.
The tools also showed traces that did not correspond to the time from which they originated, traces that can be left behind by modern methods of grinding. Conclusion: The tools were counterfeit.
That is a problem, for the Museon and for Stone Age research in the Netherlands, Stone Age archaeologists Frans de Vries and Marcel Niekus write together with colleagues in the book. Falsehood in rock, which appeared on June 3. The tools in the Museon were collected by amateur archaeologist Ad Wouters, who had been intensively involved in research into prehistory for decades. Tools that passed through his hands are in all kinds of collections.
The Museon has more than 20,000 tools that Wouters sold to the museum in 1994. From the oldest part of that collection, the authors of Falsehood in rock randomly thirty pieces to examine. At least eight of these were forged. In another museum, Opsterlân in Gorredijk, Friesland, there were eleven pieces that Wouters had once donated. Each and every one of them fake, the archaeologists saw. So they think it is high time to take a thorough look at all the other collections that Wouters has ever been involved with.
The investigation into Wouters was a spin-off of another infamous case, which is also discussed in Falsehood in rock† It revolved around Tjerk Vermaning, also an amateur archaeologist. Sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s, Vermaning had seen a Neanderthal fist ax in the regional museum of Gorredijk, and he had become fascinated by the earliest inhabitants of the Northern Netherlands. He went looking, hoping to discover something special. That proved difficult, but in 1965 he made an unprecedented double find. At Hoogersmilde in Drenthe, he discovered hand axes and other tools from the old Stone Age, of the kind that Neanderthals had once used, close together. It concerned traces of two encampments, which was unique: a Neanderthal camp had never been seen in the Netherlands and Vermaning discovered two just like that.
It was a beautiful story, especially since Vermaning was a simple man. A skipper’s son who had only been to primary school for a year and who made his living repairing pots and pans and sharpening knives and mowers.
In the years after the finds at Hoogersmilde, the discoveries just kept coming: another Neanderthal encampment near Hijken (Drenthe), hundreds of Neanderthal tools near Eemster (again Drenthe) and much more. I couldn’t believe it and the media loved it. Admonition became famous.
But foreign experts had their doubts about the finds. And then geologist Dick Stapert examined the tools from Hoogersmilde and Hijken. They were fake, he concluded in 1974.
His findings resulted in a lawsuit, because Vermaning had sold finds to the province of Drenthe for 10,000 guilders. In 1977 he was convicted of fraud, but on appeal the court acquitted him. It is true that there were fakes in his discoveries, but according to the court it had not been proven that Vermaning had made them himself.
Subsequently, the issue continued to fester, even after Vermaning passed away in 1987. Supporters maintained that researchers like Stapert were wrong and that Vermaning’s finds were genuine. Falsehood in rock so show it again thoroughly: the surfaces of Vermaning’s finds, just like those of Wouters, show traces that do not correspond to the time from which they originated. They are not weathered, made in a different way than the Neanderthals did and artificially aged with modern abrasives.
According to the authors of Falsehood in rock Vermaning did not act alone in his forgery work. Before that, he lacked knowledge about the Stone Age, they say: he needed help and that help came from Ad Wouters.
Wouters had become fascinated by the Stone Age in the 1950s. He read in and became a much-seen figure in the small world of Stone Age research, who was involved in several excavations.
Like Vermaning, Wouters made very special finds, and that in places where others found few. On the Mookerhei for example. There he found, in addition to some tools, a stone pendant with a zigzag decoration from roughly 10,000 BC. No one else saw anything like it, even after intensive research. In itself, that can happen once and in theory a few times. But Wouters was so lucky that colleagues became suspicious.
And the case really wasn’t right, so late Falsehood in rock to see. The analyzes of the stones in Opsterlân and the Museon, among others, prove that Wouters messed around on a serious scale, until shortly before his death in 2001.
Wil Roebroeks, professor of Ancient Stone Age archeology in Leiden, is impressed by the way in which the authors make this visible: ‘I suspected that Wouters had messed around, but I didn’t know it was on such a large scale. The book shows that in a refined way. And the evidence that Vermaning forged is also very clear.’
The evidence for Wouters’ rumblings will not lead to major shifts in the image of the Stone Age in the Netherlands, Roebroeks believes: ‘Broadly speaking, our ideas about early habitation here will not change: we have plenty of other finds for that. It’s about details here, but details are important.’
Counterfeiter Wouters of all people visited Vermaning in 1971 and then remarkable things happened. For example, Vermaning ‘found’ two hand axes near Lheebroek (Drenthe) in 1972. We now know they were forged. But shortly after Vermaning’s ‘discovery’, Wouters uncovered three pieces of flint in the same area that fitted the hand axes so precisely that they must have come from the same piece of stone. A clear indication that the two have been messing around together.
According to the authors, the collaboration started earlier and Wouters had been involved in Vermaning’s forgeries since 1965. That is a remarkable statement, because there is no evidence that the two had contact before 1971.
The authors have two main arguments. First of all, there are the marks on the tools, such as scratches, which indicate forgery. The same type of counterfeit traces are always found on items from Vermaning and Wouters. According to the authors, this points to cooperation from the very beginning of Vermaning’s rumblings. Wouters is said to have initiated Vermaning into the forgery technique.
But the tracks are not unique: they can be caused in different ways and Wouters and Vermaning, the sharpener of scissors and lawnmowers, may also have made them separate from each other.
Yet the authors are firm: Wouters was the mastermind behind Vermaning’s work. They point, for example, to a ‘find’ of tools that Vermaning made in 1968 at Norgervaart. According to the authors, it was so well put together and assumed so much knowledge that Vermaning could not have created the site, but Wouters was. In addition, the forgeries used genuine Stone Age finds, which had been processed to make them appear more special. Vermaning was unable to collect those finds at all, the authors say. Wouters did have the necessary resources and again the required knowledge.
This reasoning is difficult to prove, because in 1968 Vermaning had already been involved in the archaeological world for a few years. He therefore had some knowledge, finds and connections and it is possible that he brought the items together himself, or that he had help from someone else.
Roebroeks therefore calls the proposition that Wouters was involved in Vermaning’s forgeries from the start an interesting hypothesis: ‘But it is very difficult to prove that it happened that way.’
In any case, Wouters was involved in all kinds of forgeries and these are still in a series of collections spread across the Netherlands. The authors therefore think it is high time for a major clean-up and they call on the Cultural Heritage Agency to organize it: all collections in which Wouters has been involved must be checked.
Eelco Rensink, archaeologist at the Rijksdienst, also thinks intervention is necessary. He wants to start with the national database of archaeological finds, Archis, which the service maintains: ‘I think we should draw the attention of Archis users to the presence of forged artefacts in sites and collections in which Wouters was involved. That the scientific value of these sites is nil. Then researchers no longer use it for their research and publications.’ He does not know whether there will also be a physical clean-up: ‘It will be an extremely time-consuming job to trace everything.’
Frans de Vries, Lammert Postma, Marten Postma, Marcel Niekus, Hans de Kruijk, Jan Timmner and Henk Kars, Forgery in rock – Why are Tjerk Vermaning’s hand axes false and who is behind it? Publisher Koninklijke Van Gorcum; 384 pages; €29.95.
