WE find it quite difficult to project a face onto a skull,’ admits Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University. Through a mixture of science and sculpture, she has taken the skulls of Richard III and Robert the Bruce, then shown how they would have looked in their prime. ‘Seeing someone’s face is a really good way of interacting and communicating with them,’ she continues. ‘It also creates a sense of empathy and understanding and has been used by museums as a way of drawing the attention of the audience, of connecting them with people from the past.’
Facial reconstructions have been around since the late 19th century, at first as a strand of forensic science and then, in the same way, that dental records might be used, as a way of confirming the identity of the deceased. However, another use that also began to emerge was as a means of delving back into the deep past and re-creating what our ancestors would have looked like.
The existence of the skull is key. A cast of it is made and then, using knowledge of facial tissue and muscles, a face is painstakingly built up, layer by layer. Sometimes, this is done in clay by hand, other times digitally, with a computer. Yet, explains Prof Wilkinson, ‘anatomical accuracy isn’t the only thing that’s important in these depictions. There is always going to be that interplay between scientific rigor and artistic interpretation. You need it to look realistic as a face. It needs to look like a person’.
Denne historien er fra February 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
