The Reconstruction of a Saxon Man’s Face

Seventh-century Saxon skull and the facial reconstruction carried out by Caroline Wilkinson, HA260108.9

To the right is the face of a man who lived in Brighton 1,400 years ago. Caroline Wilkinson, a facial reconstruction specialist at the Unit of Art in Medicine at Manchester University, has been able to recreate the man’s features by examining the unique shape of his skull.

The man’s skeleton has been part of the Archaeology Collection since 1985. It was found during the emergency evacuation of an Anglo Saxon burial site located in Stafford Road, Brighton. Attention was drawn to the site after builders unearthed a number of grave goods during construction work on a private house. The East Sussex Archaeology Project and Brighton Museum were given three days to record and rescue as much information as they could before the building work continued. This man was discovered lying in his seventh-century grave, clutching an iron knife in his right hand and with a bronze belt buckle at his waist.

Inspired by the Unit of Art in Medicine’s work on facial reconstruction for television history programmes like Meet the Ancestors and Time Team, we decided to reveal the face of this seventh-century Saxon man in a display exploring images of the human body. The project was made possible through the generous sponsorship of American Express.

The Reconstruction

1. Thirty-four key anatomical points are marked on a cast of the skull. 2. The muscles of the face are moulded in clay onto the cast. 3. The completed reconstruction

Caroline Wilkinson established the general form of the man’s face by working from the shape of his skull, while a careful examination of the bone gave her clues about the detail of his features.  For example, a hole in the bone around his mouth shows that he had an abscess above his left front tooth, and would have had a swollen lip. A small divided bone at the base of his nose shows that he had a dent at the tip of his nose. The bones on top of his skull have completely fused together, indicating that the man was in his forties when he died.

Using her knowledge of the formation of facial muscles, Caroline rebuilt the layers of his face in clay on a cast of the original skull. As a guide she marked thirty-four key anatomical points on his face and used a set of average tissue depths for a Caucasian man in his forties. The accuracy of this method of reconstruction had been tested by forensic work done with the police. The same process is occasionally used as a last resort for dealing with unidentified bodies and has a remarkably high success rate.

Caroline covered the Saxon man’s modelled muscles and fat with layers of clay skin. Finally she added his hair and moustache, the style of which were chosen according to portraits of men on Anglo-Saxon coins. A silicone mould of the completed clay head was made. From this a bronze resin cast was produced.

The cast is exhibited alongside the seventh-century skull in the Body Gallery in Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Although we can never be sure exactly what the man looked like, when we see his face in this reconstruction he seems to come to life again.

This text was originally published on the Royal Pavilion and Museums’ main website. 

Rare Discoveries at the Booth Museum

Edmontonia Dinosaur, a related species of the Ankylosaurus. Artist impression © Mariana Ruiz Villarreal (wikimedia commons)

Following the visit of a noted academic, a number of the fossils in Brighton Museum’s collections have been found to be preserved parts of armoured dinosaurs (nodosaurids) commonly known as anklyosaurs. Any examples of nodosaurid fossils are rare in the United Kingdom, so to have so many ‘discovered’ at one time is quite exciting.

The discovery started last year when Andy Ottaway, an occasional volunteer at the Booth Museum, came across a fossil he suspected to be part of an Ankylosaur. He contacted his colleague Dr William Blows, an expert on the nodosaurids (armoured dinosaurs) who was interested, but unable to visit at that time.

Dr William Blows

Jumping forward to April 2012, Dr Blows was invited to speak at the Brighton Geological Society meeting at Blatchington Mill. He took the opportunity to visit the Booth Museum collections and look at the possible ankylosaur bone, as well as looking through the other fossils associated with it. The fossil was a part of the collection of Arthur Foster Griffith, an alderman of Brighton, who donated large collections to Brighton Museum, and was involved with the Booth Museum. This particular collection was a large number of specimens from the Cambridge Green Sand formation. The specimens are all identified as belonging to the Upper Albian of the Cretaceous period dating them to between 99.6 and 112 million years old. Although the fossils have no record of when they were collected, it seems reasonable that Griffith, a lifelong Brightonian, may have collected or purchased them whilst at university at Cambridge in the 1870s.

Presacral

The bone initially thought to be part of an ankylosaur was formally identified as the anterior end of a pre-sacral rod. This was explained as a ‘series of fused dorsal vertebrae which is fused to the anterior end of the sacrum’. This pre-sacral rod is combined with the sacrum to form the synsacrum, a characteristic unique to nodosaurid dinosaurs.

Through Dr Blow’s further exploration of the collection, he was also able to identify a number of nodosaurid dermal scutes, which are hard plate scales on the animal’s skin (hence armoured dinosaurs).

Collar

His final discovery was a particularly rare series of fossils making up part of the cervical armour ring that was found around the dorsal surface of an nodosaurid neck. These had all been labelled simply as ‘deinosaurian’.

Dr Blows now hopes to publish our specimens as part of a scientific paper, giving our collections wider exposure in the scientific community. His talk to the Geological Society was also a great success and the nodosaurid skull casts he brought along as props were fascinating.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

At Work With…

… Gerald Legg, Keeper of Natural Sciences

Fossil Human Teeth

We get all kinds of enquiries and this one was particularly unusual. A member of the public ‘phoned saying they had hundreds of teeth embedded in stone in their garden, forming part of the foundations of their patio which was being dug-up. ‘Bring some in and we’ll look at them for you’.

Chunk of old patio base with embedded ‘teeth’

A strong carrier bag duly arrived with three large chunks of ‘rock’ in which were embedded what appeared to be human teeth – by the hundred. With a little imagination all kinds of ghoulish images could come to mind!

On close examination the teeth appeared to be very uniform and incomplete – they had no roots, but they did have a hole in them; very strange. Perhaps they were for making primitive necklaces or other jewellery; nothing so obvious. A little local history research revealed that one of the world’s largest manufacturers of artificial teeth implants had once had a factory in Brighton very close to where the enquirer lived: Dentsply.

On June 23, 1899 The Dentist’s Supply Company of New York was formally chartered by the state of New York. Secretary of State John T. McDonough signed the papers in Albany. Within a month, The Dentist’s Supply Company of New York was serving dental retail outlets and manufacturing its first product, artificial teeth.

Close up of some ‘teeth’

Called 20th Century Teeth, in honour of the coming century, these platinum pin teeth were considered revolutionary. Made of porcelain, using techniques developed and perfected by George Whitely, 20th Century Teeth had platinum pins baked into the porcelain structure to hold them in place within the dental base. This was hailed as a major improvement in the design and manufacture of teeth and dentures.

In typical dentures of that day, teeth broke off from the dental base when the pressure of chewing and biting created internal stresses. After the anchors were baked into the teeth, pins were soldered to the anchors to hold the teeth in place. The strength of 20th Century Teeth earned The Dentist’s Supply Company a reputation for high quality goods. A century later, the company founded on the strength of one product is DENTSPLY International, a company that serves the world’s dental needs.

Artificial Tooth

In 1931, Trubyte was introduced as a revolutionary product line – ‘New Trubyte Teeth’. New Trubyte Teeth masterfully combined aesthetics with function and performance. This ‘harmony of form’ earned Trubyte a reputation for being the finest artificial teeth in the world. In this era, Trubyte was a true pioneer in its field.

Dentsply International Inc (Dentsply) was incorporated in 1969 in succession to a business previously conducted, since 1899, by The Dentists’ Supply Company of New York (DSCo). Dentsply is currently engaged primarily in the manufacture and wholesale distribution of dental supplies and equipment. The company also operates retail optical dispensaries. Dentsply has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1960.

Dentsply Ltd (Dentsply’s only subsidiary in the United Kingdom) which was located in Brighton at the Diamond Buildings, Coombe Road, BN2 4ER (they are now in Addlestone, Surrey), and incorporated in 1910 as Excelsior Dental Manufacturing Company. Its name was changed to Dentsply Ltd in 1936 at the time of its acquisition by DSCo. Dentsply Ltd manufactures porcelain and plastic artificial teeth.

DeTrey’s Diatorics

In October 1970 Dentsply Ltd purchased from ADI the assets and business of a tooth manufacturing factory at Blackpool which ADI had purchased two years earlier from the Dental Manufacturing Company Ltd (DMCo) together with the other dental business of that company. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Dentsply Ltd transferred production of these teeth to its Brighton factory, to both manufacture and supply them for former customers of DMCo. The overall volume of production had increased somewhat since the two manufacturing operations were consolidated in Brighton, as the following comparison between 1974 and 1969 (the last year of operations for the Blackpool factory) shows: Number of teeth produced 1969-1974:

DMCo teeth               11,237,123 (Blackpool)          15,808,743 (Brighton)

Dentsply teeth            17,853,671 (Brighton)             18,676,940 (Brighton)

Dentsply continued in Brighton until1991 when it closed with the loss of 90 jobs after improvements in dental health resulted in orders falling away

DSCo. is the world’s largest producer of artificial teeth (both porcelain and plastic) and these it manufactures in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in various other plants which it either owns or controls in Europe, Australia and South America. It claims to offer the largest variety of artificial teeth in the world, both in the number of lines and in the total of forms, sizes and shades.