Turkish expert rebuilds faces for ancient skulls

The skull of a man from ancient times has had his face restored after 1,200 years. The Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review was able to enter the Forensic Medicine Institution in Istanbul’s Yenibosna district by special permission from the Ministry of Justice to witness a facial reconstruction procedure conducted under the guidance of Sadi Çağdır, a medical forensic expert. One of dozens of skulls from cases in the laboratory, with its broken tooth and its smiling face attracted the most attention.

The skull was retrieved during the archaeological excavation of the antique city of Metropolis, 30 kilometers from the ancient city of Ephesus of Torbalı, İzmir where digging has been ongoing since 1992.

Çağdır went to the excavation site last summer at the invitation of Professor Serdar Aybek, a lecturer at Trakya University’s faculty of archaeology.

Çağdır removed a broken skull from the site and painstakingly reassembled the pieces to recreate the skull. Following this procedure, Çağdır used facial reconstruction techniques to recreate what the face may have looked like. Çağdır said this was the first facial reconstruction to be undertaken in Turkey at an excavation site. "The skull of Ada, the Carian Princess, dug up in Bodrum at the end of the 1980s, had also been reconstructed but the procedure was handled in Manchester, not in Turkey."

Facial reconstruction within the scope of forensic medicine began in Turkey in 1993 and assisted with the facial recognition of bodies that could not be identified. Çağdır said the technique proved to be fruitful.

"Although the results were not 100 percent solid, they were the next best thing to the original and many identifications could be made in many cases."

The technique has three different methods according to the information ÇaÄŸdır provided. The methods are called the "Russian" the "American" and the "Manchester," each different from the other.Â

"The Russians put the anatomical structure on the skeleton and cover it up. The Americans put the flesh back on the bones based on tissue density. The English use a combination of both of these methods," he said.

In Turkey, the "Istanbul method," developed by Çağdır, is being practiced. In this method, to acquire the correct data the skull three-dimensionally scanned.  The hardest parts to shape in the reconstruction are the eyes, nose and lips, according to Çağdır.

"The temporal and the cheekbones are the easiest to work with. The eyelid structure, lip thickness and structure of the nose are unique to the person in question and therefore, hard to do," ÇaÄŸdır said. Â

’Details are important to preserve conditions’

He said there were differences between ancient bones and modern bones. "The ancient bone is white and fragile. There is no rotting in the tooth but there is abrasion. This abrasion may be the result of the insufficient digestion of crops they had been eating. New bones, however, have tissue on them."

Çağdır said there were lots of historic cities in Turkey that were the scene of excavations, yet there was a lack of systematic work on archaeological bones.

"The details are very important for the preservation conditions of the bones. Lots of information on civilizations from thousands of years ago may be acquired through those bones. Many skeletons found in Anatolian territory have skulls showing signs of having been operated on. We may come across some very surprising findings."Â