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As visitors explore the newly opened Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland they come face to face with the past.
Realistic digital facial reconstructions of people who lived in the Perth and Kinross region of Scotland centuries ago blink and change their expressions as museum visitors pass by.
The reconstructions, which combine art, anthropology, technology and archaeology, are on permanent display at the museum, which opened on March 30.
The reconstructions are based on skulls found across Scotland, including a Bronze Age woman who lived around 4,000 years ago, an Iron Age man from 500 AD, and men and women who lived during Scotland’s medieval period in the centuries XIV and XV, as a young man victim of murder.
The museum collaborated with Dr Chris Rynn, craniofacial anthropologist and forensic artist, as well as researchers from the University of Aberdeen to study the ancient remains and bring them back to life in a unique way that can connect local visitors more deeply with their heritage, said Mark Hall, collections officer at Perth Museum and Art Gallery.
Visitors can follow every step of the facial reconstruction process, from viewing the skulls on display to using accessible screens that show how anthropologists reassemble the skulls, create digital models and arrive at the final product.
Museum visitors will be able to digitally build facial models themselves and see the results, and can even adjust hair and eye color for some recreations.
“I have been working with the Perth Museum on seven skulls,” Rynn said, “making forensic facial reconstructions of each to be turned into interactive touchscreens so that museum visitors can go through the entire estimation and sculpting process. a face.”
The museum’s collections aim to tell the story of the people who have lived in Perth over the past 10,000 years, Hall said.
“As part of our approach to trying to humanize this history, we recreated faces from the past using evidence from human skulls and applying techniques from what we call forensic anthropology,” Hall said. “What we can learn about a particular place by studying people is how they related to each other, what kind of relationships they had, what kind of life they lived, how well they were connected to the rest of the world. And archeology and anthropology unearth a lot of evidence that tells us about these things.”
Discovering Scotland’s past
She lived between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, but a Bronze Age woman, with her facial reconstruction, resembles someone who wouldn’t look out of place in modern society.
“I think seeing faces from hundreds or thousands of years ago can teach us how little people have changed over that time,” Rynn said.
His remains were originally found after a tractor broke into a burial chamber beneath Lochlands Farm in Perthshire in 1962. His body was discovered in a crouched position, and the lower left side of his facial bones had been cleanly severed.
“The excavator speculated that a desperate wound had been inflicted that possibly caused the individual’s death,” according to reports that the museum shared.
Recent research into the remains, including DNA and dental analysis, revealed that the woman was around 30 years old when she died. Her bones showed joint degeneration in her lower back, suggesting she suffered from back pain.
A depression was also found in the right frontal bone of his skull, likely caused by blunt force. Given that the wound did not penetrate the inner skull, researchers believe that the injury shortly before her death was accidental and perhaps she hit her head on something hard.
Another skull belonging to an Iron Age man, probably in his 40s when he died, was discovered during construction work in the early 1980s in Perthshire. His remains date back to the 6th century, and scientists think he was a Pict, an ancient group native to Scotland. Analysis of his bones revealed that he spent his childhood on the west coast of Scotland and later did difficult agricultural work, eating pork, wild fowl and freshwater fish.
He moved to Perthshire late in life, and his grave was sealed with a flint stone, which is used to grind grain by hand.
During construction of a concert hall in the early 2000s adjacent to the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, archaeologists unearthed the complete skeleton of a young man who died between the ages of 18 and 25 sometime in the late 14th century. .
The skeleton was found buried in a shallow hole under the foundations of old tenement houses. Although the depressions in his skull likely resulted from a hasty burial, new research suggests he died a violent death and was likely the victim of murder.
He suffered two blunt force injuries to two ribs, as well as multiple rib fractures, likely due to substantial forces exerted on his chest during a confrontation. An analysis of his bones did not reveal any chronic illnesses, but researchers noted that he suffered several growth disturbances during childhood that may have been due to illness or malnutrition.
Along with his skeleton, two silver coins were found, dated from 1279 to 1322 and from 1367 to 1371.
Resurrecting old faces
Rynn made physical and digital models during his reconstruction work after studying the shape of each skull, which helped him determine and estimate the shape of each face.
Each skull took around 50 hours to reconstruct. A 3D scan was made for each skull.
The digital scans allowed Rynn to fill in gaps or missing pieces in the skulls, mirroring what was on the other side. The dental patterns also allowed him to reconstruct part of the Bronze Age woman’s lost jaw. After digitally reconstructing each skull, Rynn added layers of tissue, estimating the depth of the tissue by studying the shape of each skull.
“For me personally, as I sculpt them and work on the faces, it feels like I’m getting to know someone and it comes to the end of the carving,” Rynn said.
He then sculpted the facial muscles in white wax, 3D scanned them, and digitized them to reassemble the faces. At the end of his reconstructions, Rynn used an algorithm to animate the faces, allowing them to blink or change expression.
“Ultimately, you have to bring them to life,” Rynn said. “So what I do is turn this 3D model into a photorealistic portrait and then use an algorithm to make the portrait I made blink and look around a little.”
Although the process is methodical, it results in something realistic that Rynn has seen mirrored around her in the real world.
“When you’re in Scotland, if you have Scottish ancestry, people can often tell and guess which clan that ancestry comes from by looking at your face,” Rynn said. “I was walking around Perth and I was seeing people who looked like one of the reconstructions I was working on and I felt like I was meeting people I was sculpting.”
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