A woman buried in Bronze Age Spain has a reconstructed face that shows her wearing huge hoop earrings and a serene expression.
The woman's and a man's remains were found in a large ceramic pot in a palace. The man died a few years before the woman, but someone reopened the pot and placed her body next to him. A scientific illustrator has recreated the face of a woman who was buried at La Almoloya using the partial skull and jewelry from the burial.
Joana Bruno, the scientific illustrator who created the digital reconstructions, told Live Science that the upper portion of her skull did not survive the ages. The silver crown was found around her head, which gave us some measure for her head, but it was still a challenge.
6 times that showed us women from antiquity were really awesome.
Scientists have been interested in the identity of the woman who was unearthed from her burial. Her burial goods, including the diadem, beaded necklaces, silver-crafted rings, bracelets, spiral hairpieces and earplugs with spirals, are of superior quality and are more valuable. The researchers said at the time that the woman had more power than her burial partner, because she outlived him and was still buried with valuable goods.
Bruno decided to recreate the woman's face because of the site's impressive preservation of many of its original inhabitants. She said that La Almoloya is a fascinating time capsule. It is an opportunity to see if the faces have the same features that could hint at shared relationships.
3 of 3 are images
The faces are from La Almoloya and La Bastida. Joana Bruno/ASOME/Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona has the rights to this image.
A digital image of a facial reconstruction. Joana Bruno/ASOME/Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona has the rights to this image.
A skull is scanned to inform a facial reconstruction. Joana Bruno/ASOME/Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona has the rights to this image.
Before any virtual reconstruction, anthropologists clean, stabilize and study the deceased's skeleton to determine the person's sex, age of death, general health and other characteristics. Bruno said that the information is taken into account when making a face reconstruction. The Bronze Age woman died between the ages of 25 to 30 years old and had several congenital conditions, including a missing neck vertebra and rib.
Bruno takes a measurement of the skull and does a laser Scan of it. She said that the laser scans allowed her to work with a digital replica of the original and minimize the manipulation of the bones. Bruno uses published techniques for estimating the position of facial features, such as the eyes, nose and mouth, and determining the thickness of the tissues, to flesh out the face.
Brunos said that by mapping out the surface of the skin, a face starts to emerge. She had to make some guesses. Bruno made the bones gray and transparent in a video to show the reconstruction process.
Bruno said the earlobes were a more straightforward decision. There were earplugs found in her tomb, one on each side of her skull. I used a laser to look at the earplugs and the diadem.
During the Bronze Age in La Almoloya, the remains of a woman and a man were buried together. The image is from ASOME-UAB.
Bruno's collaboration with anthropologists highlights the ability to estimate and rebuild missing portions with the highest possible accuracy and without damaging the original, according to a professor of archaeology at the University of Barcelona. Joana was able to show us that woman's shimmering look thanks to the 3D laser scanning of the jewels.
She said that she is reconstructing faces from the skulls of other El Argar people from La Almoloya. "These bones are real people, with their own domestic dramas, who laughed when someone told a joke, who cared for loved ones and lived in a very different world from our own."
Live Science published the original article.
