Knowing the Bones 

 

What can a skull tell us of a person's life? The skull discovered in Edinburgh College of Art has no story but maybe it can still say something of a life once lived.

 

Drs. Linda Fibiger and Elena Kranioti undertook an osteological investigation of the skull, closely studying its form, substance and appearance to better understand the life of the person whose skull this once was (or still is). 

 

This was a matter of creating assemblages to see more deeply into the form and substance of the skull. Sometimes these assemblages were very simple, a matter of turning the skull in the hand. Sometimes they were complex, involving networks of machines and people as, for example, we took a thin-section CT scan and from that generated a virtual 3D image, which allowed us to print a 3D plastic replica of the skull. 

 

From all these processes we learned that this was a skull of man, who likely died young, perhaps before thirty, and who as a child suffered some trauma or malnutrition. For more information see Dr. Fibiger's Report.