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Beauvais Lyons, Chancellor’s Professor of Art, University of Tennessee

50 years ago, an artist convincingly exhibited a fake Iron Age civilization – with invented maps, music and artifacts

'Trallib (Oil Container),' by Norman Daly, 1970. Daily made this object with an orange juicer. Photo by Marilyn Rivchin, CC BY-SA

Invented civilizations are usually thought of as the stuff of sci-fi novels and video games, not museums.

Yet in 1972, the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell University exhibited “The Civilization of Llhuros,” an imaginary Iron Age civilization. Created by Cornell Professor of Art Norman Daly, who died in 2008, the show resembled a real archaeological exhibition with more than 150 objects on display.

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