Putting a face to a name

Art meets anatomy as our ancestors are brought back to life through facial reconstructions, discovers Michael Murray-Fennell

- Michael Murray-Fennell

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’.