REFUTATION OF FARIA'S UNFAIR
INVECTIVES AGAINST ME


    In the last years Mr. Antonio Marques de Faria, executive of the Instituto Portugués de Arqueologia who runs its review "Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia" has written (obviously in "his" review), in a way completely inappropriate, a series of personal attacks against me, based on distortions, on attributing bad intentions, and on falsehoods.

    Well, not that his "scientific" critiques against me isn't just free of distortions and falsehoods, as Faria uses to keep silence about the main subjects of my papers in order to formulate criticisms which only can be formulated out of context (1), but to his "scientific" criticisms I can answer in scientific reviews, and he can always try to get excused alleging incompetence, even though that incompetence is sometimes suspiciously implausible.

    To the first criticisms I answered forcefully in my paper in Arse 36, but even before reading this paper, Faria (probably imbued with the belief so extended among the academic world that the people with a post can trample on the people without a post and without a string-puller "godfather", and that the victims must answer with a grateful smile or to take the consequences - believe me, I know it pretty well), has culminated his smear campaign with completely insulting and degrading false accusations, desperately trying to disqualify my whole study.

    It's true that in his papers he shows an excessive wish to call ignorant to the rest (something that reminds me that of "to look for the mote on somebody else's eye"), and also that he includes commentaries that are sheer disqualifier gossip (2), and even unfair attempts to claim dubious merits for himself (3), and also some other bad taste details (4), but against me definitely he has gone too far.

    In his latest paper he had no qualms about accusing me of deliberate, continual and massive plagiarism because, according to his absurd opinion, I should have quoted him, when I listed er'skon ,ar'sbikis, ar'sabas' and arskobor' as examples of personal names with ars. Notwithstanding:


    1) His accusation is LITERALY FALSE: although it's not the main part of my paper, the analysis I propose for these four terms is different to that which Faria champions, and hence it's unacceptable that he claims for himself the authorship of them. I consider er's to be a variant of ars, bikis of bikir, abas' of abar', FARIA DOESN'T; whereas I consider arskobor' to be a possible, but dubious, example of personal name with ars (by the way, what a great plagiarism means such an obvious thing), Faria has no doubts.


    2) These personal names identifications are trivial and even if these seem to be the maximum that Faria can reach, they are elementary implementations of the principles described by Untermann and, as a matter of fact, not a single one of the compound bases that appear in my analysis has been discovered by Faria. It looks like Faria believes that the rest are stupid, so that we need to wait for reading Faria's pamphlets to be able to know how much make two and two.


    3) These identifications are only raw documentation for the analysis which my paper deals with. My paper doesn't deal with those identifications and, in fact, Faria keeps silence about its real subject. For the names list that I attach, I refered to my list in other paper, in which Faria do is quoted and probably with much better valuation than his research abilities deserve . On the other hand, I refer to a list I hold responsible for as researcher. It's a very different list that that which could be obtained from Faria's papers, whose analyses for me lack credibility.


    4) In his accusation FARIA CONTRADICTS HIMSELF IN A PITIFUL WAY, since in the very same paper, he discusses a work of Velaza in which this researcher qualifies as personal names precisely ar'sbikis and ar'sabas', and as probable arskobor' (just as Faria, he doesn't classify er'skon as an example of ars) and he doesn't mentions Faria in any of these identifications (in fact he only refers to the identification of the bases ars and bikis by Untermann). But in spite of these, Faria DOESN'T LEVELL THE SLIGHTEST CRITICISM, DOESN'T MAKE ANY COMPLAIN, EVEN NOT A SINGLE COMMENT on this case, completely parallel to that for what he accuses me, but not identical, but "worse", as whereas I make analysis different to those of Faria, Velaza doesn't. Such a flagrant contradiction MAKES CLEAR THAT NOT EVEN HE BELIEVES THE UNFAIR CRITERIA by which he accuses me.


    I have attached a more explicit answer text in which I respond in more detail to the personal attacks launched by such a character. I've sent the first version of this text to Faria's superior in the Instituto Portugues de Arqueologia together with a protest; 55 days later I'm still waiting for an answer (since the last days of may 2003; P.S. four months later, still without news). We shall see...They should apologize in the next issue of their review, the 6/2 and publish my text in their review according to my legitimate right of reply. If they don't, draw your own conclussions on their honour.

new Adobe reader format file in Spanish revised in September 28th 2003

Respuesta a los comentarios de Faria, avaiable also in MS-Word file

    For my part, faced with the unfair and false personal attacks that he has launched against me, I only can say that I publicly declare that to me


António Marques de Faria is PERSONA NON GRATA.

ADDENDUM (January 2004): They didn't. Even worse, instead of making the slightest correction or apology, Mr. Fernando Real (still director of the Instituto Portugués de Arqueologia) allowed Mr. Faria to publish a paper with a hysterical build-up of falsehoods (I'd rather say "lies") and distortions of Goebelsian scope, answering with a childish tantrum to my protest. Well, in fact I must admit that his paper (as usualy his prose) reminds me Shakespeare, yeah, that of "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Their only achievement has been to make a fool of the Portuguese institutions (and of themselves of course), if they were not these collateral damages, maybe I should thank to Mr. Faria for so spectacularly having lost all his credibility. So funny. Go on, please.

The idiocy of his attacks is so obvious that perhaps I need to add nothing. But just to make it crystal clear I add the new answer text (in Spanish) in which I quote complete paragraphs of Faria's last paper (otherwise it'd be hard to believe and it's much funnier): RÉPLICA A LAS PRESUNTAS CRÍTICAS DEL PRESUNTO INVESTIGADOR ANTÓNIO MARQUES DE FARIA EN RPA 6/2 avaiable also in MS-Word file. By the way, this time I didn't send the text to Mr. Real (does he deserves such a kindness?), but to the Portuguese Ministerio de Cultura attached to an e-mail. If you want to know more details you can also read this e-mail: carta. Probably I won't add more updates to this page, if they want to apologize they must use their media. But I guess that the Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia will continue to publish its idiocies.

Doesn't mind. Suffice it to say that any future reference of Faria on me or on my papers, must be considered beforehand a deceit. (Well, that doesn't mean that the rest of his references, personal or allegedly scientific, are reliable. I wouldn't dare to say that). The pity is that they waste the Portuguese taxpayers money, who deserve a better use of their money.



1. The most clamorous example is the latest one (Faria RPA 6/1), where he levels a criticism against me for he wrongly says I assert that the Iberian personal names in unin are women's names. If Faria had deigned to comment the subject of the paper he quotes (that is, that in it I criticize the lack of criterion with which Velaza identifies women's names and that after reexamining the evidence I conclude that there is no clear case of woman name in the Iberian inscriptions, and that there is only some evidence in the endings ETON and something like IAUNIN only in Latin inscription, an even so with reservations), Faria wouldn't dare to write such a false assert. By the way, Faria should give an explanation about why he keeps silence about this study on women's Iberian names in his alleged chronicles on Paleohispanic onomastic studies, on which he only writes a false quote.

2. So, I find shocking that he devotes a whole paragraph to criticize prof. Simon Keay for when Keay refers in one of his books to the Caminreal inscription he qualifies it as Celtiberian instead of Iberian. Nonetheless, prof. Keay isn't an expert in Paleohispanic epigraphy, he wasn't discussing the inscription but adding a reference, and it's obvious that he didn't used an appropriate bibliography, and even that such an mistake could simply be a lapse or a misprint. Nonetheless, Faria takes the opportunity to criticize him, devoting nine lines, in spite of the fact that this criticism doesn't makes the slightest scientific contribution. Sheer gossip.

3. When Villaronga published the latest Iberian drachmas found, he included one that in his text is read liosisker', but in his drawing is clearly niosisker'. It's obvious that Villaronga reads the Levantine Iberian script fluently since much before Faria's birth, therefore liosisker' looks like a misprint. Given the resemblance between the signs L and N, it's quite possible that in the first coins that Villaronga had the first sign wasn't clear, but that after examining further pieces he identified the N, and simply he forgot to update the text. For me, it's an obvious misprint, but for Faria another of his great discoveries, even if that means that only Faria reads Iberian.

4. For instance, in RPA 6/1 226-227, Faria devotes 44 lines to claim against profs. Mª. P. Garcia-Bellido (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid) and C. Blázquez (Univ. de Salamanca), saying that it's something illegitimate not to quote him in their Diccionario de Cecas... concerning to the transcription bi in two Meridional Iberian coins, because they quote only prof. De Hoz. But it turns out that this transcription was first published by De Hoz in 1980 and that the merit Faria claims for himself is to have accepted that proposal in 17 (!) papers between 1991 and 2001, as if repeating the same thing many times many years later wasn't a poor method to fill papers and make curriculum, but a true scientific achievement. To top it all, Faria concludes his unfair claim with a quote of prof. De Hoz about the "vice" of keep silence on the work of other researcher and even to use it without quoting it. This is true bad taste, and a pretty stupid and indelicate one, as prof. De Hoz is García-Bellido's husband (and of course she didn't know his husband's proposal in Faria's ELEVEN YEARS LATER paper). By the way, I can't help to say that Faria used the arguments of De Hoz 1980 paper against one of my proposals (I don't consider the reading bi sure, and I prefer Untermann's) and that Faria used De Hoz's idea without giving the credit to him (RPA 5/2, 241: a)... one law for one and another for another!!. Once again Faria doesn't practise what he preaches.