Facial Reconstruction In Forensic Art

The term “facial reconstruction” refers to the process of building a face over a skull to create an image of what a person looked like during life. This technique has often been used in forensic science when attempting to identify unknown skeletonized human remains. Facial reconstruction has also been used to create the possible facial appearance of hominids and modern humans. The reconstruction of facial features of an individual onto the skull uses a combination of scientific and artistic skills of the forensic artist. This method of identification is often used as a last resort to identify the skeletonized remains of an unidentified individual. There are numerous techniques used, all of which rely on the reproduction of a potentially recognizable face. Images are created by forensic artists from post-mortem photographs of fleshed individuals or from the skulls of skeletonized individuals. The reconstructed face is publicized in the hopes that someone will recognize the individual and come forward with a possible identity. This method of identification is the most subjective and controversial within Forensic Anthropology; meaning it could have the highest margin of error. Although this is a controversial process, it has been successful enough times that advancements and developments continue to be made and it
Facial reconstruction should only be used when more precise methods of identification have failed. Though facial reconstruction is helpful in forensic cases, they are not exact and the public is often unaware of this. The term reconstruction implies that this method is exact and scientific based, when that is not entirely true. To increase the accuracy and reliability of this method it needs to be empirically tested and researched