EXPLORE
From archaeologists’
finds, he reconstructs
lifelike human faces.
Oscar Nilsson has the gift of being
able to put a face (but not necessar-
ily a name) to roughly a hundred
once anonymous individuals whose
remains have been excavated by his
fellow archaeologists. The Swedish
reconstruction expert relies on his
deep knowledge of facial anatomy as
well as his skills as a sculptor to bring
to life, for example, the regal visage
of a 1,200-year-old Peruvian noble-
woman or the surly adolescence of a
9,000-year-old Greek teenager.
Nilsson begins with a 3D-printed
copy of an original skull and crafts
facial features by hand, guided by bone
structure and relying on scientific data
sets to estimate the thickness of mus-
cle and flesh in different areas of the
face. Once reconstruction reaches what
Nilsson calls the mannequin stage, his
artistic chops kick in to “get life into the
face” with scientific accuracy.
The new and rapidly developing
field of ancient DNA has been a “game
changer” for facial reconstruction,
Nilsson says. When he entered the
field 20 years ago, determining the
skin, hair, and eye color of his subjects
was a guessing game. But in the past
decade, improvements in extracting
and analyzing DNA gave Nilsson more
data about populations’ travels and
origins, so he could give, say, an early
inhabitant of Mesolithic Britain the
appropriate dark skin and eyes. “It’s
fantastic that we can get that detail,”
he says, “to make it really relevant.” jOSCAR NILSSON
BY KRISTIN ROMEY PHOTOGRAPH BY AXEL ÖBERGINNOVATOR