Spectral authenticity and the fate of the Stone of Destiny

Abstract

This article examines authenticity debates surrounding the Stone of Destiny, a highly charged heritage object and sandstone block traditionally used in the coronation of Scottish and later British monarchs. Drawing on heritage scholarship, authenticity is understood as negotiated and culturally contingent rather than a fixed property. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines ethnography and interviews with historiography and archival research, including media sources, the article identifies recurring authenticity tropes that have circulated since the 1950s, when the Stone’s political significance intensified. These include: claims that the Stone is a medieval substitute or modern replica, religious assertions of authenticity grounded in biblical origin stories, and scholarly or scientific efforts to certify it empirically. Instead of resolving uncertainty, the article demonstrates how these tropes interact and continually regenerate it, and how authenticity debates come to perform distinct forms of cultural and political work. They address historical gaps through myth and vernacular history, enable political expression and national identity formation, support knowledge production, and shape institutional strategies concerned with legitimacy and ritual authority. The article argues that claims of (in)authenticity are therefore not simply errors to be corrected but productive forces that sustain the Stone’s dense symbolic life, suggesting that heritage practice should engage openly with authenticity’s enduring plurality.