Jane MacLaren Walsh is an anthropologist and researcher at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.[1] She is known for her role in exposing faked pre-Columbian artifacts.
Walsh grew up in Mexico and studied at the University of the Americas for B.A.
[2] She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Catholic University of America with the doctoral thesis "Myth and imagination in the American story : the Coronado expedition, 1540-1542.
"[3] Walsh's research specialty is crystal skulls, an artifact type often purported to be of Precolumbian origin and frequently revealed as hoaxes by archaeologists.
[4] Notable cases she has investigated include crystal skulls alleged to have been of ancient Mesoamerican (mostly Aztec) origins, and a piece held by the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection purported to be an authentic pre-Columbian representation of Tlazolteotl, an Aztec and central Mexican goddess.