Acámbaro

The Acámbaro Figures

In 1945 the German dealer Waldemar Julsrud began buying clay figures at Acámbaro in Mexico, dug up on the Bujares hill by a local farmer, Odilón Tinajero. Some thirty-three thousand accumulated over the years, dinosaurs among them, standing beside people. The archaeologist Charles Di Peso of the Amerind Foundation excavated the site and found the figures lying in disturbed ground with no patina of age and fresh unoxidised breaks, some still carrying file marks. In 1969 thermoluminescence testing at the Pennsylvania museum returned modern dates, and the laboratory formally withdrew its earlier results, which had been taken without allowing for the firing.