Facial reconstruction of an 11-year-old female resident of 430 BC Athens

Abstract

Although modern standards of ideal proportions and facial esthetics are based mostly on observations of human faces as depicted in Classical Greek masterpieces of art, the real faces of ordinary ancient Greeks have, until now, remained elusive and subject to the imagination. Objective forensic techniques of facial reconstruction have never been applied before, because human skeletal material from Classical Greece has been extremely scarce, since most decent burials of that time required cremation. Here, the authors show stage by stage the facial reconstruction of an 11-year-old girl whose skull was unearthed in excellent condition from a mass grave with victims of the Plague that struck Athens of 430 BC. The original skull was replicated via three-dimensional modeling and rapid prototyping techniques. The reconstruction followed the Manchester method, laying the facial tissues from the surface of the skull outward by using depthmarker pegs as thickness guides. The shape, size, and position of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were determined according to features of the underlying skeletal tissues, whereas the hairstyle followed the fashion of the time. This is the first case of facial reconstruction of a layperson residing in Athens of the Golden Age of Pericles. It is ironic, however, that this unfortunate girl who lived such a short life in ancient Athens, will now, 2500 years later, have the chance to travel and be universally recognizable in a world much bigger than anybody in ancient Athens could have ever imagined. (Angle Orthod. 2011;81:169-177.)

The archaeological contribution of forensic craniofacial reconstruction to a portrait drawing of a Korean historical figure

“…Scientifically, it is widely accepted that the first CFR was attempted by the Swiss-born German anatomist Wilhelm His who rebuilt the face of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach (His, 1895). Thereafter, the demand for CFR in archaeological research has increased and interdisciplinary studies have been performed world-wide to rebuild interesting faces from the past (Cesarani et al, 2004;Gregersen et al, 2006;Wilkinson, 2008;Papagrigorakis, 2011;Hayes et al, 2013). The CFR of King Richard III has been one of the most leading international projects highlighted by academia and the It is noticeable that archaeological excavations regarding historical figures have also been performed in South Korea for several decades (Supplementary Data 2).…”

3D laser scanning and digital restoration of an archaeological find

“…A fourth step is the digital fabrication of the part by 3D printing. There are numerous examples of the usage of reverse engineering for different archaeological study cases [4][5][6][7].…”

Facial Tissue Depths in Children with Cleft Lip and Palate

“…Facial reconstruction may be a useful tool for identification in situations where large numbers of individuals have died due to terrorism, acts of war, and natural disasters (1). Moreover, facial reconstruction can be useful in archaeological and paleoanthropological contexts to estimate the facial morphology of historical figures and purported human ancestors (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18).…”