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May 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/05/2010 6:15 PM Page 28 28 The Skull of Doom The Skull of Doom By Jane MacLaren Walsh The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull: Fact, fiction, and the creation of myth Crystal skulls have long had a fringe following, and the most famous of them is one named for the explorer-author Frederick A. Mitchell-Hedges (see “Legend of the Crystal Skulls”). Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have found the skull somewhere in Central America in the 1930s, but his adopted daughter Anna later said she found it under a fallen altar or inside a pyramid at the Maya site of Lubaantún in British Honduras (now Belize) some time in the 1920s. Neither of their contradictory accounts is true. In fact, like all the other crystal skulls thus far examined, it is a modern creation, despite its nearly mythical place in the minds of devotees. have had two opportunities to examine the Mitchell-Hedges skull closely and to take silicone molds of carved and polished elements of it, which I have analyzed under high-power light and scanning-electron microscopes. I have also evaluated the documentary evidence, newspaper stories about Mitchell-Hedges, his memoirs Land of Wonder and Fear (1931) and Danger My Ally (1954), and a file of letters and documents that Anna Mitchell-Hedges sent to Frederick Dockstader, the director of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City, which I recently found. The microscopic evidence presented here indicates that the skull is not a Maya artifact but was carved with high-speed, other measurements taken are equally close, but After my first encounter with the skull in 2007, modern, diamond-coated lapidary tools. The as the article’s author, British Museum physical Homann returned with it to the museum in 2008 historical record shows it first appeared in anthropologist Geoffrey M. Morant, notes (pp. so it could be filmed for a Smithsonian London in 1933 and was purchased a decade 105-106), “A more interesting comparison can Networks documentary, “Legend of the Crystal later by Mitchell-Hedges, who claimed the be made by superposing the outlines,” which Skull.” Following up on my initial study, which crystal skull was an authentic pre-Columbian clearly illustrates how nearly identical the skulls included examining the skull under a high- artifact. The newly found archival evidence are in size and shape. powered light microscope, under ultraviolet suggests Anna was later involved in the Adrian Digby, a young British Museum light, and computerized tomography (CT scan) evolution of tall tales about the skull’s origins, archaeologist, commented on the measurements to determine what we could without harming providing a fascinating look at the creation of a and observations made by Morant in a short the object in any way, I took two sets of silicone popular mythology in service of a profitable article accompanying the latter’s comparative molds of surface tool marks for SEM analysis. business venture. study. Digby (1936: p. 108) offered the If the skull were actually Maya from possibility that the Lubaantun, which was abandoned around A.D. Under the Microscope Museum skull was copied from an 800, the tools used to carve it would have been November 2007, Bill Homann, Anna original skull, and that at a later date the Burney sharpened stone implements combined with Mitchell-Hedges’s widower, brought the artifact skull was a sort of composite copy relying for abrasive sand. Pre-Columbian lapidary to my office in the Smithsonian’s Museum of its proportions on the skull now in the Museum technology has been studied with considerable Natural History for examination. Slightly and for its anatomical detail on some human detail for more than a century. Through my own smaller than life size, it recalled a crystal skull skull in the possession of the carver. research, I have compiled a large bibliography in the British Museum, and it seemed to me to He came to the conclusion that it would on stone carvings from controlled be a close copy of that object, at least in size and be quite strange that anybody wishing to carve a archaeological excavations in Mexico and shape. However, it differed from the British skull out of rock crystal, and taking a real skull Central America documenting the fact that pre- Museum example in its more elaborate carving, as his model should modify its dimensions to fit contact artisans carved stone by abrading the extremely high polish, and separate mandible. those of another crystal skull which he would surface with stone tools, as well as wood, and in The similarity of the two skulls’ size and see was but a poor copy of nature. It shows a later pre-Columbian times, copper tools, in shape can be verified using measurements and perverted ingenuity such as one would expect to combination with a variety of abrasive sands or photographs taken at the British Museum in find in a forger, but Mr. Burney’s skull bears no pulverized stone. No historic or ethnographic 1936, when the museum’s skull was compared traces of recent (metal age) workmanship; so source of which I am aware indicates pre- to the Mitchell-Hedges one, which was then this suggestion may almost certainly be Columbian lapidaries used hard metal, such as called the Burney skull after its owner, London dismissed. iron or steel, as filing, drilling, or cutting tools, art dealer Sydney Burney. According to an Digby’s analysis was perceptive. By or that they employed any type of wheeled or article published in the journal Man, the British copying the British Museum skull, then thought rotary technology (Walsh 2008: pp. 18-19). Museum (BM) skull is 17.7 cm front to back to be authentic, a forger would make his work Comparison of SEM (scanning electron (glabellar-occipital length), and the Mitchell- look more legitimate. Unfortunately the science microscopy) images of ancient and modern Hedges (MH) skull is 17.4; the BM skull is 13.5 of the day was limited. Without modern carvings shows the difference. A line incised cm from side to side (maximum calvarial equipment Digby was unable to detect any with pre-Columbian tools appears as rough with breadth) and the MH skull is 14. Many of the evidence of the skull’s recent manufacture. (Continued on Page 29)