Confronting historical legacies of biological anthropology in South Africa-Restitution, redress and community-centered science: The Sutherland Nine.

We describe a process of restitution of nine unethically acquired human skeletons to their families, together with attempts at redress. Between 1925-1927 C.E., the skeletonised remains of nine San or Khoekhoe people, eight of them known-in-life, were removed from their graves on the farm Kruisrivier, near Sutherland in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. They were donated to the Anatomy Department at the University of Cape Town. This was done without the knowledge or permission of their families. The donor was a medical student who removed the remains from the labourers' cemetery on his family farm. Nearly 100 years later, the remains are being returned to their community, accompanied by a range of community-driven interdisciplinary historical, archaeological and analytical (osteobiographic, craniofacial, ancient DNA, stable isotope) studies to document, as far as possible, their lives and deaths. The restitution process began by contacting families living in the same area with the same surnames as the deceased. The restitution and redress process prioritises the descendant families' memories, wishes and desire to understand the situation, and learn more about their ancestors. The descendant families have described the process as helping them to reconnect with their ancestors. A richer appreciation of their ancestors' lives, gained in part from scientific analyses, culminating with reburial, is hoped to aid the descendant families and wider community in [re-]connecting with their heritage and culture, and contribute to restorative justice, reconciliation and healing while confronting a traumatic historical moment. While these nine individuals were exhumed as specimens, they will be reburied as people.

Craniofacial reconstruction of the Indus Valley Civilization individuals found at 4500-year-old Rakhigarhi cemetery.

Despite academic efforts to study the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), there have as yet been no successful attempts to unveil the IVC people's craniofacial appearance. We investigated the IVC cemetery area of Rakhigarhi site, which was estimated to be of 2273 ± 38 and 2616 ± 73 years BCE. By craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) procedure using computed tomography (CT) data of two Rakhigarhi skulls (A1 BR02 and A2 BR36), we successfully reconstructed the faces of the IVC individuals who were buried about 4500 years ago. This is the first attempt to unveil scientifically accurate representations of IVC people's actual facial morphology.

The Affordances of 3D and 4D Digital Technologies for Computerized Facial Depiction.

3D digital technologies have advanced rapidly over recent decades and they can now afford new ways of interacting with anatomical and cultural artefacts. Such technologies allow for interactive investigation of visible or non-observable surfaces, haptic generation of content and tactile experiences with digital and physical representations. These interactions and technical advances often facilitate the generation of new knowledge through interdisciplinary and sympathetic approaches.Scientific and public understanding of anatomy are often enhanced by clinical imaging technologies, 3D surface scanning techniques, 3D haptic modelling methods and 3D fabrication systems. These digital and haptic technologies are seen as non-invasive and allow scientists, artists and the public to become active investigators in the visualisation of, and interaction with, human anatomy, remains and histories.Face Lab is a Liverpool John Moores University research group that focuses on creative digital face research; specifically the further development of a 3D computerized craniofacial depiction system, utilizing 3D digital technologies in facial analysis and identification of human remains for forensic investigation, or historical figures for archaeological interpretation.This chapter explores the affordances of such interactions for the non-destructive production of craniofacial depiction, through a case-study based exploration of Face Lab workflow.

Categorizing facial creases: A review.

Ensuring uniformity in the nomenclature standardization of facial creases is important to enable the scholarly community to follow and debate the advancements in research. This review highlights the prevailing disparity in the nomenclature that refers to the same facial crease by researchers and laypeople, and suggests uniform names for the facial creases based on available literature. The previous and current trends in facial crease classification are also discussed. The nomenclature of the facial creases considered for this review include the following: the nasolabial fold, corner of the mouth lines, upper and lower lip creases around the mouth region, the mandibular folds, the bifid nose, the transverse nasal line, the vertical glabellar line, chin crease, the mental crease, four type of creases around the eyes, forehead creases, and periauricular creases. A figure illustrating the above facial creases is included as reference. It is hoped that the proposed standardization of nomenclature would ensure a more scientific referencing of facial creases enabling more effective scientific interaction among the scholarly community as well as the laypeople interested in the research and application of facial creases.

The unfamiliar face effect on forensic craniofacial reconstruction and recognition.

Previous research into the reliability of forensic craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) has focused primarily on the accuracy of reconstructed faces from European or African ancestry skulls. Moreover, the recognition of CFR in relation to the experience and ancestry of the practitioners and the assessors has not been previously considered. The cross-race effect is a recognised phenomenon in psychology studies, where familiar ancestry faces are recognised more readily than unfamiliar ancestry faces, but there is a paucity of research addressing the relationship between the accuracy of reconstructed faces and the familiarity with this ancestry by the practitioners/assessors. The aims of this research were to investigate whether 'unfamiliar-race effect' has any influence on the accuracy of CFR and to evaluate how much the correct recognition rate of CFR is affected by the cross-race effect. Eight CFRs from three ancestry groups were produced by experienced practitioners in order to explore the aims. The results demonstrated that practitioners produced more recognisable CFRs using skulls from a familiar ancestry than skulls from unfamiliar ancestries.

Bio-Anthropological Studies on Human Skeletons from the 6th Century Tomb of Ancient Silla Kingdom in South Korea.

In November and December 2013, unidentified human skeletal remains buried in a mokgwakmyo (a traditional wooden coffin) were unearthed while conducting an archaeological investigation near Gyeongju, which was the capital of the Silla Kingdom (57 BCE- 660 CE) of ancient Korea. The human skeletal remains were preserved in relatively intact condition. In an attempt to obtain biological information on the skeleton, physical anthropological, mitochondrial DNA, stable isotope and craniofacial analyses were carried out. The results indicated that the individual was a female from the Silla period, of 155 ± 5 cm height, who died in her late thirties. The maternal lineage belonged to the haplogroup F1b1a, typical for East Asia, and the diet had been more C3- (wheat, rice and potatoes) than C4-based (maize, millet and other tropical grains). Finally, the face of the individual was reconstructed utilizing the skull (restored from osseous fragments) and three-dimensional computerized modeling system. This study, applying multi-dimensional approaches within an overall bio-anthropological analysis, was the first attempt to collect holistic biological information on human skeletal remains dating to the Silla Kingdom period of ancient Korea.

Correlation between average tissue depth data and quantitative accuracy of forensic craniofacial reconstructions measured by geometric surface comparison method.

Accuracy is the most important factor supporting the reliability of forensic facial reconstruction (FFR) comparing to the corresponding actual face. A number of methods have been employed to evaluate objective accuracy of FFR. Recently, it has been attempted that the degree of resemblance between computer-generated FFR and actual face is measured by geometric surface comparison method. In this study, three FFRs were produced employing live adult Korean subjects and three-dimensional computerized modeling software. The deviations of the facial surfaces between the FFR and the head scan CT of the corresponding subject were analyzed in reverse modeling software. The results were compared with those from a previous study which applied the same methodology as this study except average facial soft tissue depth dataset. Three FFRs of this study that applied updated dataset demonstrated lesser deviation errors between the facial surfaces of the FFR and corresponding subject than those from the previous study. The results proposed that appropriate average tissue depth data are important to increase quantitative accuracy of FFR.

The post-mortem resilience of facial creases and the possibility for use in identification of the dead.

The post-mortem resilience of facial creases was studied using donated bodies in order to establish the efficacy of crease analysis for identification of the dead. Creases were studied on normal (pre-embalmed) and bloated (embalmed) cadavers at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) to establish whether facial bloating would affect facial crease visibility. Embalming was chosen to simulate the effects produced by post-mortem bloating. The results suggested that creases are resilient and changes were only detected for creases located on the periphery of the face, particularly at areas where the skin is thick, such as at the cheeks. Two new creases not previously classified were identified; these creases were called the vertical superciliary arch line and the lateral nose crease. This research suggests that facial creases may be resilient enough after death to be utilised for human identification.

Facial soft tissue thickness database for craniofacial reconstruction in Korean adults.

One hundred Korean adults (50 men, 50 women) were scanned in the upright position using a cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanner. The soft tissue (ST) thicknesses were measured at 31 landmarks, 10 midline and 21 bilateral landmark sites, and the means and standard deviations were obtained for male and female subjects. While 18 of 31 landmarks showed sex differences, the majority showed higher values for male subjects with the exception of a few landmark sites corresponding to the zygoma area, which showed smaller values in men than in women. The mandibular area showed greater differences between the right and left sides. Overall, the ST thickness measurements obtained in this study can be used as a database for the forensic craniofacial reconstruction of Korean adult faces.

An accuracy assessment of forensic computerized facial reconstruction employing cone-beam computed tomography from live subjects.

The utilization of 3D computerized systems has allowed more effective procedures for forensic facial reconstruction. Three 3D computerized facial reconstructions were produced using skull models from live adult Korean subjects to assess facial morphology prediction accuracy. The 3D skeletal and facial data were recorded from the subjects in an upright position using a cone-beam CT scanner. Shell-to-shell deviation maps were created using 3D surface comparison software, and the deviation errors between the reconstructed and target faces were measured. Results showed that 54%, 65%, and 77% of the three facial reconstruction surfaces had <2.5 mm of error when compared to the relevant target face. The average error for each reconstruction was -0.46 mm (SD = 2.81) for A, -0.31 mm (SD = 2.40) for B, and -0.49 mm (SD = 2.16) for C. The facial features of the reconstructions demonstrated good levels of accuracy compared to the target faces.

Prediction of nasal morphology from the skull.

The objective of this study was to compose a reliable and readily reproducible method of predicting nasal morphology from the bony aperture, which restricts subjectivity whilst allowing anatomical nuance to be taken into account. Clinical head CT data from a sample of 79 North American subjects of varied ancestry was analysed for interrelationships between the bone and soft tissue of the nose in three dimensions, then pooled with 60 lateral cephalograms of subjects of European ancestry from England to augment nasal profile data. A series of simple regression equations was produced using linear distances between pairs of bony landmarks to predict nasal profile dimensions and restrict potential subjective error in Gerasimov's "Two-tangent" method. Maximum nasal width, the position of the alae and nostrils, and prediction of nasal asymmetry were incorporated into the resulting threedimensional nasal prediction method.

Appraisal of traditional and recently proposed relationships between the hard and soft dimensions of the nose in profile.

This paper tests six methods of predicting external nasal profile proportions, using the form and dimensions of the bony nasal (piriform) aperture. A sample of 122 lateral cephalograms was measured and traced before each method was attempted, under blind conditions where appropriate. Error was assessed by comparing predicted to actual proportions. Methods used by the following authors were tested: Krogman and Iscan (1986 The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine, Springfield: C.C. Thomas), Gerasimov (1955 The Reconstruction of the Face on the Skull), Prokopec and Ubelaker (2002 Forensic Sci. Commun. 4:1-4), Macho (1986 J. Forensic Sci. 31:1391-1403), George (1987 J. Forensic Sci. 32:1305-1330), and Stephan et al. (2003 Am J. Phys. Anthropol. 122:240-250). The two-tangent method by Gerasimov (1955 The Reconstruction of the Face on the Skull) was found to perform best at predicting a point on the nasal tip on male and female preoperative subjects. The method of Krogman and Iscan (1986 The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine, Springfield: C.C. Thomas) performed poorly, as did the nasal profile determination method (Prokopec and Ubelaker 2002 Forensic Sci. Commun. 4:1-4). The other methods, all derived by a process of regression calculations, were shown to perform with variable accuracy on this sample, despite the age range and ethnicity of this sample closely resembling that of the samples from which these methods were derived.

The relationship between the soft tissues and the skeletal detail of the mouth.

The estimation of mouth width and lip thickness from the skull for facial reconstruction has traditionally relied upon scant scientific research and "rules of thumb" laid down by subjective interpretation and experience. This study tested these assumptions by taking caliper and photographic measurements of mouth width and interpupillary and interlimbus distances of 96 subjects and lip thickness and teeth height measurements of 95 subjects. The most reliable indicator of mouth width was found to be the interlimbus distance, and lip thickness was positively related to the height of the teeth. There were no differences in these relationships between men and women. Standards for predicting the lip thickness from the teeth height were suggested for White Europeans and Asians from the Indian subcontinent.

Measurement of eyeball protrusion and its application in facial reconstruction.

The estimation of eyeball protrusion from the bony orbit has traditionally relied upon Wolff's theory (1976) that the cornea will be tangental to a line taken from the superior to the inferior orbital margin. This study tested this theory by taking measurements from MRI cranial images of 78 eyes of white adult subjects. Orbital depth had a significant negative linear correlation with eyeball protrusion, and protrusion of the eyeball was determined by the following standard: eyeball protrusion = 18.3 - (0.4 x orbit depth). Current eyeball position determination was shown to be as much as 3.9 mm too deep in the socket, and a practical application of this result to facial reconstruction is discussed.

In vivo facial tissue depth measurements for white British children.

This paper reports the results of a study of facial tissue depth measurement in White British children of both sexes, aged between 11 and 18 years. The purpose of this research was to increase the information available upon tissue depth data for children, primarily for use in forensic facial reconstruction. Facial tissue depths were measured at 21 anatomical points using ultrasonic echo-location. The mid-philtral, upper lip border and lower lip border points showed consistently larger tissue depths in the males than the females, and the zygomatic attachment showed consistently larger tissue depths in the females than the males. The males showed a general increase in tissue depth with an increase in age at all the mid-line facial points and the cheek points. The females showed increased tissue depth with age at all the points except the infra-orbital, lateral orbital, mid-zygomatic arch and mid-mandibular points. A table of mean tissue depths was developed for males and females divided into two-yearly age groups.