I should have used my terms better. Yes encrustations can and are faked. Anything can be glued on from sand and dirt to genuine ancient material taken from another item.
What is almost impossible to
fake are the hard
crystallized encrsutations such as malachite and others elements that build up onto the structure over the centuries. You can glue, bond, weld, etc but you can't re-create genuine
crystallized adhesions. Of course you need a microscope to be able to see that they are genuine.
As I said, you can't tell from a photo.
Shawn