We had a professor at my university who was well-known for her detective work in identifying works of art that turned up with no provenance. She got to dig around in monasteries and museums in Europe to do her work. I heard her lecture a couple of times, and the knowledge of materials and brush strokes, of art formats (paint, drawing, lithograph, etc. makes it as interesting a discovery as some of the archaeological finds either out in the landscape or things found and stored away in museum vaults without any knowledge of what they were till later.

Oddball things creep into the thread because of the nature of the research into such old objects. Best to ignore the few that aren't exactly dinosaur fossils or cave paintings and just enjoy the ride.