The Artisanal Dimensions of Reconstruction

It is worth dwelling further on what Élisabeth Daynès actually does when she reconstructs an ancient face in silicone — because the craft involved is rarely described in enough detail for readers to understand how the artistic and scientific elements interact.

The process begins months before any material is picked up.

Daynès studies the specimen exhaustively — examining scans of the skull, reviewing the genomic data, consulting with paleoanthropologists and anatomists who have worked with the specimen, reading the relevant scientific literature.

By the time she begins the physical work, she has a detailed understanding of the skeletal evidence and the genetic information, and she has developed a working hypothesis about what the face should look like.