Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ATAM is a Division of the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program

The saga of the Getty Kouros is a perfect example of an archaeometric project where art meets science, and neither discipline provides all the answers.In the late 1980's the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, heard of an unusually fine Greek marble statue, a kouros (youth), that was available for purchase. Stylistically, it appeared to date to the sixth century B.C., but art historians were divided in their opinions about whether the statue was authentic. Why was it so pristine and white? Why did the style of the hair not match that of the feet? Would an ancient sculptor have mixed so many styles in one statue? Their discussion was complicated by the fact that most existing kouroi are in fragments--only about thirteen exist that are in as good condition as this one.

The Getty Museum asked for some materials analysis of the marble to try and ascertain 1) where the marble came from (was it from a quarry site known to have been used in antiquity?) and 2) was the patina (surface crust) ancient or modern?

Preliminary analyis by geologist Stanley Margolis showed that the marble was from the island of Thasos, an ancient quarry site, and that it had a calcitic crust that could have only developed over a long period of time. This was enough for the Getty, and they purchases the statue.

Later it emerged that the provenance papers were faked and there was another torso, an obvious fake, with striking stylistic similarities. The Museum purchased that sculpture too and took the kouros off display for further tests.

New analyses revealed that the surface crust on the kouros was much more complex that originally thought (a calcium oxalate monohydrate rather than calcium carbonate) with certain characteristics that could not be duplicated in the laboratory at that time. Furthermore, the kouros did not have the same surface as the torso, which was apparently treated in an acid bath.

At a conference in 1992, art historians and scientists debated all the evidence and were still almost equally divided on the authenticy of the kouros. Is it an archaic Greek statue with a faked provenance, or a forgery with a faked provenance? Will we ever know the truth?

Go to this web site for more information on this controversial statue.

Bibliography on the Getty Kouros.

Copyright 2002. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.