In the early 1890s, James Scotford made a remarkable discovery while digging holes for fence posts on recently deforested land near Wyman, Montcalm County, Michigan, when he dug up a small cup of unbaked clay decorated with strange symbols. In the next few years, the wild excitement exhibited by Scotford infected others led to the unearthing of numerous clay caskets and tablets decorated with more of the strange conglomeration of ancient alphabets and topped by recumbent lions and enigmatic human faces. There were also copper medallions and stone pipes. Hundreds of Indian mounds and mound-like elevations were demolished in a frenzy to find more of the “Michigan Relics.”

Over the next 30 years thousands of “Relics” made of clay, slate, copper and stone would be unearthed across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Controversial virtually from the moment they first appeared, the Relics pitted the infant professional archaeological community who denounced them as bad fakes against those who believed that the relics represented physical evidence of an otherwise unknown migration of some ancient Near Eastern people to Michigan. The controversy became so heated and well known that one of the principal archaeological journals of the day declared Michigan “the Storm Center of American Archaeology.”

While front-page news in the early 1900s, few people today are aware of the Relics or the fact that the controversy continues on today more than 110 years after their initial discovery. Now the unified collection of two of the principal proponents, James Savage and Daniel Soper, has come home permanently to Michigan Historical Center. The Michigan Historical Museum has mounted a major exhibit, “Digging Up Controversy: The Michigan Relics” to explain the history of the fraud and the numerous ways archaeologists have worked to expose the bogus nature of the artifacts. The exhibit will run through August 18, 2004 at the Michigan Historical Museum, 702 W. Kalamazoo, Lansing, Michigan.

If you cannot make it to Lansing, check out the exhibit mini-tour at: http://www.sos.state.mi.us/history/michrelics/

For additional information contact John R. Halsey, State Archaeologist, at (517) 373-6358 or johnh@michigan.gov