The International Commission arrived at Glozel on the morning of November 5, 1927. During the course of their three days of excavation, they found two bone awls, a pebble engraved with a reindeer head and six Glozelian letters, a bisexual idol, two bone pendants, a schist ring, a tablet, and a clasp madeof antler. Everyone was happy with these finds. The spectators, who had observed the finding of the tablet in situ, were sure that the commission would support the authenticity of the site. However, when the report of the International Commission appeared at the end of December 1927, it stated that, except for a few pieces such as flint axes and bits of stoneware, everything at Glozel was a fake. The tombs had been made a few years before. There was no trace of ancient fauna.
In the meantime René Dussaud, a famous epigrapher and curator at the Louvre Museum, was telling anyone who would listen that Emile Fradin was a clever forger. It became clear to everyone that Emile had to counter-attack or lose his reputation. On January 10, 1928, Emile filed suit for defamation against Dussaud in the Paris Court of the Seine. A prominent attorney took the case at no charge. Dussaud, however, had no intention of appearing in court. When he realized that threats would not work, he decided to enlist the help of his anti-Glozelian friends in the Prehistoric Society of France.
Dr. Felix Regnault, president of the French Prehistoric Society, came to Glozel on February 24th, paid four francs admission to the small museum, and left. His attorney Maurice Garçon went straight to Moulins where he filed a complaint of fraud. The next afternoon a squad of policemen directed by Dr. Regnault arrived at the site, searched the house and barn, destroyed the glass display cases in the museum, and took away three cases of artifacts, many of which were damaged when later returned. They were not gentle with the Fradin family. The raid produced no evidence of forgery, but the French Prehistoric Society had achieved its objective. On February 28th the suit against Dussaud was postponed because of the pending indictment against Emile.
The scholars who disagreed with the conclusions of the International Commission and had supported Dr. Morlet and Emile in these troubled times suggested that a new, truly objective group investigate the site. This group of a dozen members, called the Committee of Studies, excavated at Glozel between April 12 and April 14, 1928. During their excavations they found three engraved pebbles, one showing a reindeer and three Glozelian signs, a broken, perfectly fossilized bone pendant with some Glozelian characters engraved on one side, a large fragment of an inscribed tablet, a bone engraved with a goat and several Glozelian signs, and a small clay lamp. At the end of their work they issued a statement affirming the authenticity of all their finds and attributing them to the Neolithic period.
In the meantime, the objects seized during the police raid were being analyzed by Gaston-Edmond Bayle, chief of the Criminal Records Office in Paris. In May 1929 he completed a 500 page report dealing with the tablets alone. Bayle stated that the tablets had been made in the last five years and that he had even found a fresh apple stem in one. After Bayle's assassination, analyses completed by his subordinates were also critical of the site, as was a report on the artifacts produced by Champion, a technician at the Museé de St. Germain-en-Laye.
Although Dr. Morlet refuted all of these statements, the court at Moulins accepted Bayle's arguments. On June 4, 1929, Emile was formally indicted for fraud by Judge Python. The Dussaud case, which had been scheduled to come up in front of the Paris courts on June 5th, was postponed indefinitely. A difficult period began for Emile, who had to go to Moulins each week for interrogation while the case was being investigated. The Mayor of Ferrières-sur-Sichon addressed a public letter to the Minister of Justice stating that "The Fradin family has always enjoyed the greatest respect, due to its perfect honesty under all circumstances" and two petitions testifying for Emile were signed by 43 local residents.
Emile's attorneys applied to transfer the case to a new court in Cusset. In April 1931 the public prosecutor in Cusset, Mr. Antonin Besson, dismissed the case against Emile. In his documentation, he stated that "well-known scholars have replied to and refuted all the arguments invoked by the prosecution." He concluded "No precise fact against the accused has been upheld." In March 1932 the defamation charge against Dussaud finally came to trial in Paris. Fifteen days later Dussaud was found guilty of defamation and held responsible for all of the costs of the trial.
Dr. Morlet continued to excavate at Glozel until shortly before World War II. In 1942 a new French law gave ownership of the subsoil to the government, thus forbidding all excavation without official permission. This meant the end of excavation at Glozel, which became a quiet backwater. Emile, now married, farmed his land and raised his family.
During the 1950s Dr. Morlet made two attempts to have Glozel bones dated by the new technique of carbon-14, one in France and one in the United States. However, he died in 1965 without achieving the authentication for which he had fought so hard and hoped so long. The last time Emile saw Dr. Morlet, shortly before he died, the doctor told him, "You mustn't give up, you know. The truth will come out before long."
In 1971 the Danish physicist Vagn Mejdahl used a new dating technique called thermoluminescence (TL) to examine several tablet fragments from Glozel. In 1973 a tablet was given a date of about 600 BC. Mejdahl was later joined by the Scottish chemist Hugh McKerrell and two French atomic scientists, Henri François and Guy Portal. The group published three papers on the Glozel dates, two in Antiquity and one in the French Revue du Centre. Two carbon-14 dates produced conflicting results. By 1979 they had obtained 39 TL dates from 27 different Glozel ceramics, 15 of them from the Celtic period.
As a result of the new dates, pressure mounted in France for a reopening of the site. In 1983 the Ministry of Culture decided to investigate Glozel and other nearby sites. Although the full report on this work has never published, a thirteen page résumé appeared early in 1995. Scientists spent a week in 1983 at Glozel and dug five test holes in the Field of the Dead itself, a total area of about three square yards, but were unable to find undisturbed soil. In their conclusions the authors place the site chronologically during and after the Middle Ages, admitting that some objects might date to the Iron Age - if, however, they haven't been slightly aged." They suggest that "an authentic Glozelian base had been 'increased' after its discovery to make it more interesting." The lack of Glozelian artifacts at Chez Guerrier, Puy Ravel, and Le Cluzel led the researchers to suggest that the earlier finds had been planted there before their discovery in the 1920s.
Continued excavation might have modified these negative conclusions. But when the archaeologists proposed it, Emile Fradin, unhappy with their treatment of the artifacts, refused to give permission. Glozel was discredited again.
In 1996 Alice Gerard, wife of Sam Gerard, the scientist who had helped with the 1954 American effort to date Glozel bones by C-14, wrote to the museum in Vichy to ask what had happened at Glozel. Her letter led to a meeting with Robert Liris in New York in June, 1994. Liris and the Gerards decided to make new efforts to authenticate the site using modern scientific techniques. Two engraved bone tubes found in Tomb II were brought to the US by Liris in June 1995 and tested at the AMS C-14 laboratory at the University of Arizona. They dated in the 13th century AD. In 1996 the Gerards persuaded Hugh McKerrell, the chemist who had performed some of the first TL tests, to join with them and Liris in their attempts to use science to solve the enigma of Glozel.
The Gerards were not the only new personalities on the Glozel scene. In September, 1996 Professor René Germain and others organized a meeting on Glozel in Vichy; the reports given at the meeting were published in 1997. Germain went on to arrange further Colloques; one has been held each year since 1999. He established an international group of scholars, called CIER, and continued to publish Actes du Colloque for each meeting.
Through the Colloques, and through further research made by those involved, new facts about Glozel have been brought to light. The existing information on Glozel dating has been summarized and evaluated and more C-14 dates have been obtained. Unfortunately, it is clear that the riddle of Glozel will only be solved by further excavation.
