[defrost]

In the days of Howard Carter essentially nothing .. and one can argue that there was no archeology then, as we understand it today, just glorified upmarket treasure hunting that destroyed invaluable layers in order to wrench gold trinkets from their settings.

Today there is procedure, as dull as that sounds, that makes it very difficult to plant evidence and get away with it (as evidenced by your linked story).

The majority of significant digs are proposed and planned some months, years even, in advance. The sites are photographed, scanned with geophysical instruments, and the stakeholders are many - land councils, archeological councils, the actual teams with feet on the ground, etc.

As trenches are dug photographs are taken, when 'something' pokes up a bit it's immediately photographed up close and measurements are taken before being carefully removed.

To stage a find would generally take more than one person and they'd have to operate in a sea of oversight.

I wouldn't claim that this is impossible, I would say that's its very hard to pull off and even harder to keep a secret for many years without someone being suspicious.

Significant artifacts get a great deal of scrutiny .. so one would have to be created that had no trace of modern tools, materials, post atomic age isotopes, etc.

[HerculePoirot]

> To stage a find would generally take more than one person and they'd have to operate in a sea of oversight.

And yet the japanese hoax happened. I've seen whole teams of people engage into online vote cheating in my workplace. And knowing the game is rigged is the best incentive to cheat, along with career-advancement stakes.

As for faking carbon-dating, you only need a nuclear reactor. ChatGPT brings up the following:

> The Vinland Map came to light in the 1960s, but its authenticity has been a subject of intense debate ever since. One controversial aspect of the map was a Carbon-14 dating conducted in the early 2000s, suggesting that the parchment dated back to the 15th century. However, scientists also found a modern form of ink known as an anatase titanium dioxide on the map. This particular type of ink was developed in the 20th century, causing some speculation that the map could be a forgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_Map

[defrost]

By your own comment it didn't "happen" so much as it was "attempted"

    Hearing the rumour of fraud, journalists from Mainichi newspaper installed hidden cameras at a dig site where Fujimura was working and caught him planting artifacts. 

> As for faking carbon-dating, you only need a nuclear reactor.

"Only" .. and I think you'll find it's a lot more complicated that just that - chat with some of the scientists at a US National lab (or physicist in a nuclear field) and you'll find there's entire spectrums of isotopes that fingerprint materials pre & post Atomic age - and there's more than just carbon dating.

> Vinland Map

another example of inks and cabon not matching - as I stated in my comment it's difficult to fake artifacts.

[Tor3]

I remember the time before that particular Japanese hoax was exposed by the Mainichi newspaper. That guy wasn't alone in claims about extremely early finds in Japan, he was part of a section of society which believed that the Japanese people were unique and different from everybody else. But the time frames they assumed made zero sense and long before that particular fraud was exposed this wasn't taken seriously anywhere else outside Japan.