Reconstructing fragmented bones, reconstructing fragmented lives

Objetivo

Human skeletal remains can offer key information on diverse aspects of past life but, like all archaeological materials, they only give a glimpse into the life of past individuals; hence, a fragmented perspective into our ancestors’ lives. Their interpretative potential is greatly inhibited by the fact that such remains are often found fragmented due to several anthropogenic and natural taphonomic agents, such as funerary treatment, animal activity, soil pressure and others. This fragmentation severely limits the information that may be extracted from human bones in terms of metric analysis, geometry and morphology. RECONSTRUCT aims at producing 3D morphable models for the main elements of the lower and upper limbs of the human skeleton, which will be then used to infer the missing morphology of fragmented or incomplete bones. In order to achieve this aim and address a major current limitation in human skeletal analysis, RECONSTRUCT will integrate approaches from osteoarchaeology, forensic anthropology, biology, engineering, and data science. The results of the project will maximize the information that may be extracted from bioarchaeological research, contributing to a more comprehensive assessment of past life parameters. RECONSTRUCT will also have major implications in forensic anthropology since the study of modern skeletal remains suffers from similar limitations in terms of partial preservation as those witnessed in archaeological bones. Finally, the source code and raw data emanating from RECONSTRUCT will be made open access, greatly enhancing the extension of this approach to zooarchaeology, palaeoanthropology, and the prosthetic implants industry.