As visitors explore the recently opened Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Scotland, they encounter 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 14th and 15th centuries, as a young murder victim.
The museum collaborated with Chris Rynn, a craniofacial anthropologist and forensic artist, as well as researchers from Scotland’s 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 its heritage, said Mark Hall, collections officer at Perth Museum and Art Gallery.
Visitors can see each step of the process of creating facial reconstructions, from viewing the skulls on display to using accessible screens that show how anthropologists reconstruct the skulls, create digital models and arrive at the final product. See how the reconstructions were done in the video below.
Museum visitors will be able to digitally build the facial models themselves and see the results, even having the ability to adjust hair and eye color for some recreations.
“I have been working with the Perth Museum on seven skulls,” said Rynn, “making forensic facial reconstructions of each to be turned into interactive touchscreen displays so that museum visitors can go through the entire process of estimating and carve a face.”
The museum’s collections are intended 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 recreate faces from the past using evidence from human skulls and applying techniques from what is called forensic anthropology,” Hall said. “What we can learn about a specific place by studying people is how they related to each other, what kind of relationships they had, what kind of lives they led, 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 somewhere between 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, however, 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 of years ago 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 through a burial chamber beneath Lochlands Farm in Perthshire in 1962. His body was discovered in a huddled position, and the lower left side of the facial bones had been cut clean.
“The excavator speculated that a desperate injury had been inflicted, possibly causing the individual’s death,” according to information shared by the museum.
Recent research of the remains, including a DNA and dental analysis, revealed that the woman was in her 30s when she died. Her bones showed degeneration in the joints in her lower back, suggesting she suffered from back pain.
A depression was also found in the right frontal bone of his skull, which was likely caused by blunt force. Given that the injury 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 sixth 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 arduous agricultural work, eating pork, wild fowl and freshwater fish.
He moved to Perthshire late in life, and his grave was sealed with a millstone hand, which is used to grind grain.
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 grave under the foundations of old houses. Although depressions in his skull were likely caused by a hasty burial, new research suggests he died violently and was likely a victim of murder.
He suffered two blunt force injuries to two ribs, as well as multiple rib fractures, likely caused by substantial forces being exerted on his chest during a confrontation. An analysis of his bones did not reveal any chronic illnesses, but researchers noted that he experienced several growth arrests during childhood that may have been due to illness or malnutrition.
Two silver coins were found with his skeleton, dating from 1279 to 1322 and 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. For each skull, a 3D scan was taken.
The digital scans allowed Rynn to fill in gaps or missing pieces of the skulls by mirroring what was on the other side. Dental patterns also allowed him to reconstruct part of the Bronze Age woman’s missing jaw. After digitally reconstructing each skull, Rynn added layers of tissue, estimating tissue depths by studying the shape of each skull.
“For me personally, as I’m sculpting them and working on the faces, it feels like I’m meeting someone else as well when I get to the end of the sculpt,” Rynn said.
Then, he sculpted the facial muscles in white wax, 3D scanned them to reconstruct 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 kind of bring them to life,” Rynn said. “So what I do is turn that 3D model into a photorealistic portrait and then use an algorithm to make the portrait I made blink and look around a little bit.”
Although the process is methodical, it results in something realistic that Rynn has seen reflected 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 taking a look at your face,” Rynn said. “I was walking around Perth, and I saw 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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