3D Face Reconstruction from Skull Aimed to Archaeological Applications. The Site of Murecine: a Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to generate a 3D face model from its skull that is specifically aimed to archaeological/anthropological applications. The proposed approach to facial reconstruction, starting from the well established landmark based reconstruction technique", relies on craniometrical analysis and content based image retrieval technology to achieve a more ethnically faithful reproduction of main facial features respect to other methods based uniquely on very large scale statistical data. It also tries to address the problem of a plausible reproduction of important physiognomic features (such as eyes, nose, lips, ears and hairs) which simply can t be inferred from the skull. The facial reconstruction of a female subject found in the archaeological site of Murecine (Pompei) who found death during the volcanic eruption in 79 a. C. is presented as a case study.