Munich

The faces of the ancients are about to be revealed using a toolbox of techniques created by surgeons and engineers.

A team of archaeologists and anthropologists at an interdisciplinary research centre in Germany is using the imaging techniques to reconstruct the features of a 2,000-year-old body.

Found in 1936 in a bog in Lower Saxony, the body's soft tissues have been well preserved by its stay in the swamp. This is the result of the dehydrating effects of tannic acid, as well as the presence of sphagnum moss in the bog, which hinders decomposition.

Head start: a holographic image of a bog body's soft tissue will aid its reconstruction. Credit: CAESAR CENTER

The researchers at Caeser, the Center of Advanced European Studies and Research, in Bonn are using computer tomography to get a three-dimensional image of the body's hard tissue, and holography to image the surface of its soft tissues.

Peter Hering, a physicist at the University of Düsseldorf who works at Caeser, first developed the holographic techniques for reconstructing congenitally malformed faces using laser surgery. But in June, he contacted Mamoun Fansa, director of the Oldenburg Nature and Folk Museum, which holds five 'bog bodies' dating back to Roman times. They decided to transfer one of the bodies to Bonn for imaging analysis.

Data from the two analyses are now being merged to create a physical replica of the body, using some prototyping techniques borrowed from the engineering industry. The final reconstruction based on the replica will be crafted by the company Atelier Daynes in Paris, which specializes in making sculptures of palaeoanthropological specimens.

Reconstructions of ancient bodies based on computer tomography have been done before, but not with the advantage of data on soft tissue, says Hering. “The high-precision sets of data that we have generated will allow the artists to work more accurately and less fancifully,” he says.

“Little is known about what humans looked like in the period 300 bc to ad 300 because bodies tended to be burned,” says Fansa. Bog bodies are an exception — at least 20 such bodies, thought to be victims of sacrificial rituals, are held by various museums in northern Europe. By studying their faces, historians hope to gain clues as to whether they are Roman or German. Fansa also plans to use DNA analysis to try to resolve this question.

Hering and Fansa are keen to extend the study if the initial analysis works well. Hering says he would like to be able to make holograms of any newly discovered bodies before they are exhumed. The scientists add that the hologram technique will allow other museums to display virtual, life-sized bog bodies.