Glozel artifacts

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The Glozel artifacts are a collection of over 3,000 artifacts, including forged clay tablets, sculptures and vases, some of which were inscribed, discovered from 1924 to 1930 in the vicinity of French hamlet of Glozel.^[1]

Promoted by their discoverers as proof of an advanced prehistoric civilization, the finds initiated a series of claims and counterclaims. The objects were all initially dismissed as a hoax by professional archaelogists.^[2] Later research confirmed that some of the items date back to the Iron Age,^[3] but it was not before a 1995 study ordered by the French Ministry for Culture that the "prehistoric civilization" thesis was rebutted and the vast majority of the finds dated to the Middle Ages, with significant presence of alterations and forgeries.^[4]