Lindsay SheedyLeave a Comment on Episode 21: The Crystal Skulls

Episode 21: The Crystal Skulls

Listen to the episode HERE on Soundcloud or visit the podcast on iTunes, either through the Podcasts App (just search for “Stuff about Things Art History”) or by clicking HERE.  Happy listening!

Main sources:

  • Print Sources:
    • Jane MacLaren Walsh and Brett Topping. The Man Who Invented Aztec Crystal Skulls: The Adventures of Eugene Boban. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2020.
    • Jane MacLaren Walsh. “Legend of the Crystal Skull.” Archaeology 61, no. 3 (2008): 36-41.
    • Owen Evans. “The Smithsonian’s Crystal Skull.” Smithsonian Magazine [n.d.]
    • G.M. Morant. “A Morphological Comparison of Two Crystal Skulls.” Man 36 (1936): 105-107. [from 1936, contains photographs of the “Skull in the Burney Collection,” the same one that F.A. Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have found in Lubaantun]
    • Bruce Bower. “Skullduggery Worthy of a Film: Famous Crystal Skulls Shown to Be Counterfeits.” Science News 173, no. 19 (2008): 12.
    • Frank Dorland. “Der Kristallschädel von Lubaantun.” Antike Welt 6, no. 3 (1975): 48-51.
    • Richard Garvin. The Crystal Skull: The Story of the Mystery, Myth, and Magic of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull Discovery in a Lost Mayan City during the Search for Atlantis. Garden City: Doubleday, 1973. [fun but bananas read, commissioned by Anna Mitchell-Hedges]
  • Online “sources”:
    • “Legend of the Crystal Skulls” [documentary featuring commentary from Jane MacLaren Walsh]
    • “The Crystal Skulls” [an episode of Ancient Aliens, season 6, episode 2 — pour yourself a glass of wine and have some fun watching this one]

Images:

Image result for london crystal skull
The Crystal Skull in the British Museum in London [image source: Wikipedia]
Portrait of Eugène Boban, the man who “invented” the crystal skulls [image source: Wikipedia]
Frederick Mitchell-Hedges and his companion Lady Richmond Brown at Lubaantun
Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, Lady Richmond Brown, and anonymous companion at Lubaantun in 1924 [image source: The Unredacted]
Chichén Itzá - Platform of the Skulls by Dorothy and Bill Bell
Example of authentic skull motifs in Mayan art at Chíchén Itza [image credit: Dorothy and Bill Bell]
Image result for paris crystal skull homme
Anna Mitchell-Hedges with the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull [image source: The Unredacted]
 

Fig. 2. (a) White quartz skull with hollow cranium, # 409954 Natural History Museum, Sm D. Hurlburt, Smithsonian Institution); (b,c) SEM images of moulds of carved features (British those in Fig. 1c, worked with rotary wheels. (c) Groups of fine parallel striations on the inter coarse striation (arrowed) was probably made by an ‘improperly dressed’ bonded wheel (s
The Smithsonian Skull with microscopic close-ups of the grooves of the teeth, which show markings consistent with the use of modern-day lapidary stones [image source: Semantic Scholar]
Image result for jane maclaren walsh
Our hero! Jane MacLaren Walsh and the Smithsonian Crystal Skull [image source: Spokesman]
Happy listening!

-Lindsay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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