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As visitors explore Scotland’s newly opened Perth Museum and Art Gallery, they come face to face with the past.
Lifelike digital facial reconstructions of people who lived in the Perth and Kinross region of Scotland centuries ago blink and change their facial expressions as museum visitors pass by.
The reconstructions, which combine art, anthropology, technology and archaeology, are on permanent display in the museum, which opened on March 30.
The reconstructions are based on skulls found across Scotland, including a Bronze Age woman who lived about 4,000 years ago, an Iron Age man from AD 500 and men and women who lived during Scotland’s medieval period in the 14th century. and 15th century, such as a young male murder victim.
The museum collaborated with Dr. Chris Rynn, a craniofacial anthropologist and forensic artist, and 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 see every step of the process of creating the facial reconstructions, from viewing the skulls on display to using accessible displays that show how anthropologists reassemble skulls, create digital models and arrive at the final product.
Museum visitors will be able to digitally build the facial models themselves and see the results, and even have the option to customize hair and eye color for some recreations.
“I have been working with the Perth Museum on seven skulls,” said Rynn, “from which I have created forensic facial reconstructions that can be turned into these interactive touchscreen displays so that visitors to the museum can go through the whole process of estimating and sculpting. 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 humanize that story, we recreated faces from the past using the evidence of human skulls and techniques from so-called forensic anthropology,” Hall said. “What we can learn about a particular place by studying its people is how they interacted with each other, what kind of relationships they had, what kind of lives they lived, how well connected they were to the rest of the world. And archeology and anthropology reveal a lot of evidence that tells us about these things.”
Discovering Scotland’s past
She lived somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, yet her facial reconstruction makes a Bronze Age woman look like 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 in that time,” Rynn said.
Her remains were originally found after a tractor broke through a burial chamber beneath Lochlands Farm in Perthshire in 1962. Her body was discovered in a crouched position and the lower left side of the facial bones had been cleanly excised.
“The excavator speculated that a desperate injury had been inflicted that possibly caused the death of the individual,” according to information shared by the museum.
Recent examination of the remains, including DNA and dental analysis, showed the woman was in her 30s when she died. Her bones showed joint degeneration in her lower back, indicating that she was experiencing back pain.
A depression was also found on the right frontal bone of her skull, which was likely caused by blunt force. Given that the injury did not penetrate the internal skull, researchers believe the injury was accidental just before her death, and she may have hit her head on something hard.
Another skull of 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 from the sixth century and scientists believe 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 rough agricultural work, eating pork, wild birds and freshwater fish.
He moved to Perthshire later in life and his grave was sealed with a stone, used for grinding grain by hand.
During the 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 in a shallow pit under the foundations of old tenement houses. Although depressions in his skull were likely the result of a hasty burial, new research suggests he died a violent death and was likely a murder victim.
He suffered two blunt force injuries to two ribs and multiple rib fractures, probably due to significant forces being applied to his chest during a confrontation. An analysis of his bones revealed no chronic diseases, but researchers noted that he experienced several disturbances in his growth during his childhood, which may have been due to illness or malnutrition.
Two silver coins were found with his skeleton, dating from the period 1279 to 1322 and 1367 to 1371.
Breathing new life into old faces
During his reconstruction work, Rynn created physical and digital models after studying the shape of each skull, which helped him determine and estimate the shape of each face.
It took about 50 hours to reconstruct each skull. A 3D scan was made of each skull.
Digital scans allowed Rynn to fill in gaps or pieces missing from 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 depth by studying the shape of each skull.
“For me personally, it feels like I’m meeting someone as I’m sculpting them and working on the faces, even though the sculpture is coming to an end,” Rynn said.
He then sculpted the facial muscles in white wax, scanned them in 3D 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.
“Finally you have to bring them to life a little bit,” 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’ve created flash and look around a little bit.”
Although the process is methodical, it results in something lifelike that Rynn saw reflected in the real world around him.
“If you’re in Scotland and you’re of Scottish descent, people can often tell and guess which clan that lineage comes from just by looking at your face,” Rynn said. “I was walking around Perth and saw people that looked like one of the reconstructions I was working on, and it felt like I was meeting people I was sculpting.”
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