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Anglo-Saxon Face Comes Back To Life

September 05 2006


Young people in Lincolnshire have travelled back in time to re-construct the face of an Anglo-Saxon, from a skull which was found in Lincoln.

A teenage boy applying pieces of clay to a cast of a skull.

The young people who worked on the project all either live or have lived in a children's home.

They worked with staff from Lincolnshire Heritage Services to learn how forensic science, archaeology and anthropology can help us rebuild a person's face.

Scientists work from the size and shape of skulls, and from tests on bones and teeth.

In this picture layers of clay are being built onto a model of the skull to build up the face.

Here's the finished head model, alongside her skull. Isn't that clever?

You can see the face in an exhibition at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln, from 2 September until 8 October 2006.

Model of the head of a white, blonde woman with blue eyes, next to a skull in an exhibition gallery.


This project got us thinking about other museums who have studied the human skulls in their collections and worked out what the long-dead person might have looked like.


At the Corinium Museum in Cirencester they have a reconstruction of the face of an Anglo-Saxon woman, who was 25-30 years old when she died. Her body was discovered in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Gloucestershire in 1985.

Remains of a skull with bone missing round the eye sockets and two bottom front teeth missing.

The grave dates to the 6th century AD and she had so many valuable things buried with her that she has been nicknamed 'Mrs Getty', after a famous millionaire called John Paul Getty.

Here is Mrs Getty's skull.

A cast was made from the skull, then pegs were inserted into the cast to mark the likely thickness of the soft tissue of her face.

Then the main muscles of her face were added, and her nose and eye shapes moulded on.

Strips of clay representing the soft tissues were laid over the muscles and the head was completed in clay.

Cast of a skull with marker pegs inserted, glass eyes and clay shapes marking soft tissues.

Wax cast of reconstructed head without hair.

Another cast was made in wax and the reconstructed head was given glass eyes, skin tones and hair.

Here's what the experts think Mrs Getty might have looked like.

Reconstructed head of white woman with blonde hair.

Skeleton lying in glass-topped display case.

This is the skeleton of Spitalfields Woman. She was found in a Roman and medieval cemetery in Spitalfields in London in 1999. You can visit her at the Museum of London.

This is a reconstruction of her face, which you can also see at the museum.

Tests on Spitalfields Woman's teeth revealed that she might have grown up somewhere warmer than Britain - maybe Italy, Spain or southern France, so the reconstructed head was given brown glass eyes, long dark hair and a Mediterranean skin tone.

Wax reconstruction of head of white woman with brown eyes and elaborately styled brown hair.

Wax reconstruction of the face of a white man with green eyes and brown hair.

This is the reconstructed face of Leasowe Man, a Romano-British man whose skeleton was found near Leasowe Castle in Merseyside in 1864.

His face was reconstructed from a scan of his skull, which is in the Natural History Museum in London.

You can find out more about him on the National Museums Liverpool website.


To find out more about Anglo-Saxon life, check out Show Me's Anglo-Saxons topic page.


	There's loads more about the Romans on Show Me's Romans topic page.

Kristen Bailey


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