April Fakes: The British Museum Crystal Skull

For April Fakes Day 2025, we hear from Culture&...

The British Museum Crystal Skull: a brief history and analysis of its provenance

The British Museum Crystal Skull is one of many controversial artefacts in the museum’s collection, though not for the usual reason of its return being demanded by its country of origin. Rather, the British Museum Crystal Skull is widely believed to be a ‘fake’ but it remains on display. Made from a single block of transparent quartz, the skull, and others like it, have been the subject of occult fascination, varied speculation, and even inspiration for the first Indiana Jones film, yet there has been increasing scepticism about its authenticity since its acquisition by the Museum in the late 19th century. While some have claimed it to be an ancient Mesoamerican relic, and indeed it is assumed that the skull was acquired under this belief, recent scientific investigations have cast serious doubt on its purported origins. (British Museum, n.d.). This article examines the history of the British Museum’s acquisition of the crystal skull, the controversies surrounding its authenticity, and the findings of modern scientific analysis. According to anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh (2008) the skull’s appearance relates to the activities of Eugène Boban, a French antiquarian and dealer of pre-Columbian artefacts, who had a controversial reputation, having previously been the official archaeologist of Emperor Maximilian I – the ruler of the French puppet regime in Mexico. After the violent overthrow of the regime in 1867, Boban remained living in Mexico until 1886. (Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). Walsh says:

"In July 1886, the French antiquarian moved his museum business and collection [from Mexico] to New York City and later held an auction of several thousand archaeological artifacts, colonial Mexican manuscripts, and a large library of books. Tiffany & Co. bought the crystal skull at this auction for $950. A decade later, Tiffany’s sold it to the British Museum."

Boban had already been denounced as peddling fakes while he was selling objects through his antiquarian business in Mexico City. He had claimed the ‘discovery’ of multiple crystal skulls, including one he sold to an ethnographer, Alfonse Pinart, who donated it to the Trocadero, precursor of the Musée de l’Homme, now housed in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (Hammond, 2009). Walsh also tells us that in the late 1990s another version of the skull was donated to the Smithsonian Institution and was purported to have been purchased in Mexico in 1960.

The British Museum’s skull was initially believed to be of Aztec, pre-Columbian origin, dating to before the Spanish conquest of Mexico. (British Museum, n.d.). It is life-sized, measuring approximately 15 cm in height, and is made from a single piece of clear rock crystal (quartz) (Sax et al., 2008). Its smooth, polished surface and hollow eye sockets give it an eerie, lifelike appearance. Unlike some other crystal skulls (such as the Mitchell-Hedges skull), the British Museum’s specimen lacks a detachable jaw and displays less intricate detailing (Nickell, 2007). At first glance, perhaps this would have encouraged the Museum’s 1897 acquisitions team to believe the skull could have been fabricated with pre-industrial hand tools such as those extant in Mexico in the pre-Columbian era. So, this is a story about how, even with the expert scholarship available to museums, their provenance research on dubious figures like Boban and assertions of authenticity can sometimes not only be lacking but erroneous. Indeed, for much of the 20th century, the British Museum displayed the skull as a genuine pre-Columbian artefact, possibly Aztec or Mixtec in origin (Walsh, 2008). Proponents of its authenticity argued that:

Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Aztecs, were known to carve symbolic skulls (e.g., ‘tzompantli., or skull racks) (Smith, 2003).
Crystal was a sacred material in many indigenous traditions, associated with divination and spiritual power (Saunders, 2001).

Tzompantli Museo Templo Mayor, Mexico City. Photograph by "El Comandante" (2011), CC BY-SA 3.0. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

However, these claims were largely speculative, as no documented archaeological excavations had ever uncovered a similar artefact in a verified Mesoamerican context (Hammond, 2009) and, furthermore, knowledge of real pre-Columbian artefacts was scarce in the later nineteenth century when this object was acquired.

The credibility of the skull was further undermined by the dubious history of its seller, Eugène Boban. Historical records show that Boban had been involved in selling fraudulent antiquities in Mexico City (Walsh, 2008). Additionally, the sudden appearance of multiple crystal skulls in the late 19th century – coinciding with increasing European fascination with ‘exotic’ and ‘occult’ artefacts – naturally raised suspicions of modern fabrication (Nickell, 2007).

In the mid-20th century, archaeologists began openly questioning the skull’s origins. Unlike genuine Mesoamerican carvings, the British Museum skull lacked stylistic consistency with known Aztec or Mixtec art (Smith, 2003). Additionally, its smooth, symmetrical features suggested the use of modern lapidary tools and abrasives rather than traditional techniques (Sax et al., 2008). These particularly focus on the marks made upon the quartz to depict the skulls teeth.

Since they both had crystal skulls in their collections, in 2005, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution conducted a joint study using advanced techniques, including:

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to examine tool marks (Freestone et al., 2008).

X-ray diffraction (XRD) to analyse the crystal structure (Sax et al., 2008).

Comparative studies with authenticated Mesoamerican carvings (Hammond, 2009).

The findings were definitive in three main ways:

1. Tool Marks: the skull showed evidence of being worked upon with rotary wheels and abrasives, tools not known to be available in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (Freestone et al., 2008).

2. Material Analysis: the quartz was consistent with Brazilian or Madagascan sources, not Mesoamerica (Sax et al., 2008).

3. Stylistic Inconsistencies: the carving lacked the symbolic motifs typical of Aztec or Mixtec art (Smith, 2003).

These results confirmed that the skull was a 19th-century fabrication, likely produced in Europe to meet the demand for exotic curiosities (Walsh, 2008). There is some evidence to suggest that the British Museum crystal skull, and perhaps the other examples such as the skull held at the Musée du Quai Branly, and the Mitchell Hedges Skull were likely manufactured in Germany from the 1850s, rather than being genuine pre-Columbian artefacts. In addition to the aforementioned scientific analysis, historical records implicate German workshops, particularly in the Rhineland town of Idar-Oberstein, a renowned centre for gemstone carving that supplied curiosities to global markets (Walsh, 2008). Eugène Boban, the French antiquities dealer who sold the skull, had ties to these workshops, and similar skulls were catalogued in German mineralogy collections by the 1860s (Hammond, 2009). The confluence of technological, material, and archival evidence strongly points to a German origin, reflecting the European market’s demand for “exotic” artefacts rather than ancient craftsmanship.

The museum now labels the artefact as "probably European, 19th century," emphasizing its role in the history of forgeries rather than pre-industrial civilisations (British Museum, n.d.).

The British Museum crystal skull is an illuminating case study with regard to the intersection of European archaeology, colonialism, exoticism, and forgery. Once lauded as a relic of the Aztecs, it should now be understood as a product of 19th-century craftsmanship (Walsh, 2008). Its journey from Tiffany & Co. to the museum’s display cabinets reflects broader themes of artefact collecting, provenance research, authenticity, commodification, and the myths that surround historical objects. While no longer considered an ancient treasure, the skull remains an object of fascination for British Museum visitors but is an important artefact for understanding the history of fakes and the public’s enduring fascination with the mysterious.

Samuel Pontin
March 2025

References

British Museum. (n.d.). Crystal skull. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am1898-1. Accessed 31 March 2025.

Childress, D. H. (2012). The crystal skulls: Astonishing portals to man’s past. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press.

Freestone, I. C., Sax, M., & Walsh, J. M. (2008). ‘The origins of the British Museum crystal skull’. Archaeometry, 50(6), 1019-1033. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2008.00436.x

Hammond, N. (2009). ‘The crystal skull: A fake Aztec artifact’. Archaeology, 62(3), 45-49.

Nickell, J. (2007). Adventures in paranormal investigation. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky.

Nichols, G. (2009). ‘Hollywood and archaeology: Indiana Jones and the crystal skull mythos’. Journal of Popular Culture, 42(4), 681-695.

Sax, M., Walsh, J. M., & Freestone, I. C. (2008). ‘The origins of two purported Mesoamerican crystal skulls’. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35(10), 2751-2760. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2008.05.007

Saunders, N. J. (2001). ‘A dark light: Reflections on obsidian in Mesoamerican culture’. Antiquity, 75(290), 103-108.

Smith, M. E. (2003). The Aztecs. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Smithsonian Institution. ‘Crystal skull investigation records, 2005-2008’ [Archival materials]. Smithsonian Libraries. https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!silibraries&uri=full=3100001~!254125~!0#focus. Accessed 31 March 2025.

Walsh, J. M. (2008). ‘Legend of the crystal skulls’. Archaeology, 61(3), 36-41.