Culturally, the community living in Most na Soči had strong ties with Paleovenetic groups in northeastern italy (especially with the Este group) and with the Dolenjska (lower Carniola) group in Slovenia.

The settlement was partially excavated between 1971 and 1982 by Drago Svoljsak, the curator of the Regional Museum in Nova Gorica. These excavations revealed thirty early–Iron Age houses as well as some later structures. In the early Iron Age, Most na Soči was an open settlement—which means that no defensive structures were recorded—divided into dwelling and craft sections (the latter including metallurgical activities).

Peter Turk

References

Gabrovec, S., and D. Svoljsak. 1983. Most na Soci I. Ljubljana: Narodni Museum.

Marchesetti, C. 1893. “Scavi nella necropoli di S. Lucia presso Tolmino.” Bolletino della Societa adriatica di scienze naturali in Trieste 15: 3–336.

Terzan B., F. Lo Schiavo, and N. Trampuz-Orel. 1984–1985. Most na Soci II. Ljubljana: Narodni Museum.

Moulin Quignon

Second only to the piltdown forgery, Moulin Quignon is one of the most celebrated frauds of prehistoric archaeology. By the end of 1859, the argument about whether human beings had a high antiquity (certainly extending back to the time of extinct animals) had been won by jacques boucher de perthes, hugh falconer, and others through the patient excavation of sites such as brixham cave and the reexamination of the English sites of kent’s cavern and Hoxne and the Somme River gravels in france. However, at none of those sites had the excavators been able to locate the bones of the oldest humans, and they based their arguments on the presence of artifacts in very old deposits.

Boucher de Perthes sought to solve this problem by offering his workmen the sum of 200 francs or the first human bones to be retrieved from his sites. On 23 March 1863, one of his workmen recovered a human tooth (in association with two axes). A week later, Boucher de Perthes’s joy knew no bounds when another tooth and the right half of a human lower jaw were retrieved from the same deposit.

Many of the scientists most directly concerned with the debate about high human antiquity flocked to the site, in particular armand de quatrefages, Falconer, john evans, and joseph prestwich. Early conviction that Boucher de Perthes had made a significant discovery was (on the English side at least) replaced by skepticism when Prestwich and Evans announced that some of the stone artifacts recovered from the site were fakes.

Falconer reexamined the tooth and the jaw and pronounced them modern, a conclusion that sparked a storm of controversy. In an attempt to resolve the dispute, édouard lartet proposed a committee of inquiry that would provide each side with the opportunity to state its case in open discussion. This event took place on 9 May 1863 and was attended by most of the disputants (with the exception of Boucher de Perthes). Argument raged about whether the stone tools were fakes (resolved in the negative after the committee visited the site on the 13 May and observed the excavation of more artifacts that Prestwich thought were genuine) and about whether the jaw was modern and had been introduced to the deposit (the argument favored by Falconer but not endorsed by the committee).

The matter did not end there. Returning to England, Falconer urged Prestwich and Evans to return to the site and excavate under controlled conditions. Evans arranged for Henry Keeping (the excavator of Brixham Cave) to visit the site (between 3 June and 6 June), and his assessment, reported by Evans and supported by Evans’s continued analysis of the previously excavated tools, was highly negative. Evans closed the circle by making a strong case that the jaw had been taken from the nearby site of Mesnières, which had been visited by one of the workmen from Moulin Quignon.

There was never any admission (certainly not by Boucher de Perthes) that there had been any fraud. Nonetheless, the evidence mounted by Falconer, Evans, and Prestwich about the jaw and the associated artifacts effectively consigned the remains to obscurity in the store of the