>Calixtlahuaca is not in West Mexico. It's in the State called Mexico. The student that did the prank was a participant in the excavation. There was no "eureka moment". As a matter of fact the exact provenience of most of the artifacts of Calixtlahuaca is uncertain because Garcia Payon, the chief archaeologist, did such a sloppy job of it. See, the reexamination of the dig by Michael Smith at [www.famsi.org]

Smith specifically says: "One offering, from either Structure 5 or Structure 6 in Group C (García Payón’s published descriptions are contradictory on this point) supposedly included a Roman figurine (García Payón 1961; Hristov and Genovés 1999). As I describe in my website: (www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/tval/RomanFigurine.html), this object cannot be considered a valid or well-documented archaeological find; see also Schaaf and Wagner (2001)."

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1. Mr. Payon was a serious archaeologist. The initial site dig was extensive. If this was a prank by a student then why was the prank continued. That would only discredit the entire excavation.
2. it would also discredit Mr. Payon as an archaeologist.
3. The excavations took place in the 30's. Mr. Payon supposedly CONTINUES the prank 30 years LATER.
4. And Mr. payon involves another individual to TL date the object YEARS later.
5. if it was a prank and known as such why the 30 year maintenance of it. This prank stuff smells to high heaven.
6. In fact this whole script is almost chapter and verse of Mr. Camacho at a place called Valsequillo.

>this object cannot be considered a valid or well-documented archaeological find<

1. It exists. It has been photographed. It leaves NOTHING to the imagination. No one sees a picture of Jesus in a potato chip. It is a roman head.
2. It has been dated and the DATE is not in question.
3. it was found during an excavation at the SITE. Not some museum or hand me down.
What else does it take to make it valid and well documented? Mr. Smith needs to go back to the drawing board. Very simply Mr. Payon could have just ignored the object as an obvious prank or identoified it as such, hence no dating of it needed over the intervening 30 years.

And as I have already pointed out Mr. Smiths objections are all context based which don't fit the situation.

To you earlier comment about how the head could have gotten to the site. Yes there are and were museums and collections. One would have to assume that this archaeological student therefore planned this prank and STOLE or misappropriated the item (access to is not ownership). NOT a great career booster to say the least.

In another post you suggest how unlikely it would be that thois roman head would end up in Mexico as a result of contac.

Via Mr. Smth's context speculations and yours you are probably correct. But he and your ruminations do not alter the fact of the existence of the obect,i's date, and where it was found. That is what has to be answerd; not smoke and mirrors.