3D printed reconstruction of Jericho skull man’s entire head.
TCT's Sam Davies delves into the world of high-tech archaeology as academics seek to solve a 9,500-year-old mystery with scanning and 3D printing.
It has been 64 years since archaeologist, Dame Kathleen Kenyon, excavated seven human skulls in the Palestinian City of Jericho at the site of Tell es-Sultan. Having passed away in 1978, Kenyon hasn’t been around to see one of her most revered discoveries undergo a complete facial reconstruction with the help of a 3D Systems ProJet x60 3D printer – a reconstruction so successful, the leading minds steering the project believe they have an incredibly accurate portrayal of what this human looked like.
Amazing in itself that a skull, thought to be up to 9,500 years old, had survived so long, the British Museum and its partners wanted even more. Covered in plaster, filled with soil and with seashells to represent the skull’s eyes, the fossil only just resembled that of a human head. Yet, there was a real human, and an untold story, within the remains of this skull.
In the early stages, Alexandra Fletcher, who led the reconstruction project for the British Museum, and her colleagues, did not know whether they were dealing with a man or a woman. Among these colleagues were Jessica Pearson, a specialist in human osteology and University of Liverpool, UK, academic, and later Crispin Wiles, a professional anatomist at the Imperial College London. It was a CT scan which would tell the team not only that the skull belonged to a man, but a host of other things too. Fletcher’s team could derive that the man had abscesses in his jaw where his rotting teeth had caused an infection, and also that he had undergone artificial cranium modification when he was younger, perhaps in an attempt to make him look better or mark his status, according to Fletcher.
Then 3D printing was introduced in a bid to find out what this man looked like – a tough ask since its lower jaw on one side was missing. At this point, ThinkSee3D were brought in to 3D print replica skulls.
“We used a 3D Systems ProJet x60 which is perfect for bone models as it uses a gypsum-based powder and reproduces the surface colour too,” Steven Dey of ThinkSee3D told TCT. “A human skull has complex internal and external geometry, so 3D printing on a powder-based printer was the best option as there are no issues with supporting structures.”
A power cut midway through one of the replicas meant a half-printed skull, which fortunately resembled a medical cross-sectional view. This, and one other complete skull model have recently been exhibited in the British Museum, while a second complete replica was used as the starting point for the reconstruction team.
Creating a replacement lower jaw by replicating the bone structure on the other side of the skull, as well as referring to the skulls it was found with and consulting data of average jaw sizes in humans from that period, the reconstructionists were ready to find out what this human looked like. Fusing an acrylic resin in gypsum, a soft sulphate mineral, before building muscles on the base and tissue on the face of the skull, a reconstruction of such accuracy was carried out that Fletcher believes the man would be recognisable, but for the non-existence of time travel.
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“This technique was developed from the police having unidentified human remains that they needed to match to their missing person’s list. They had an immense success rate in being able to have family members recognise their relatives” she told TCT. “So this technique is a real tried and tested technique. We can be confident that if we were able to travel in time, bring people who lived (in Jericho) around 9,500BC into the room of our reconstruction, they would recognise this person.”
