The Face of Stonehenge: 3D Surface Scanning, 3D Printing and Facial Reconstruction of the Winterbourne Stoke Cranium

We report here the genome sequence of an ancient human. Obtained from approximately 4,000-year-old permafrost-preserved hair, the genome represents a male individual from the first known culture to settle in Greenland. Sequenced to an average depth of 20x, we recover 79% of the diploid genome, an amount close to the practical limit of current sequencing technologies. We identify 353,151 high-confidence single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), of which 6.8% have not been reported previously. We estimate raw read contamination to be no higher than 0.8%. We use functional SNP assessment to assign possible phenotypic characteristics of the individual that belonged to a culture whose location has yielded only trace human remains. We compare the high-confidence SNPs to those of contemporary populations to find the populations most closely related to the individual. This provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit.

Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), which has recently come into use for airborne environmental monitoring, is now beginning to find success in archaeological survey. Liaison between the Environment Agency and English Heritage has led to a lidar survey of the Stonehenge landscape, where new sites have been discovered, known ones extended and its potential as an important new tool for the management of archaeological landscapes is discussed for the first time. Lidar has the potential to radically transform our future understanding and management of the historic environment. The article by Devereux et al. (pages 648-660 of this volume) shows the technique applied to woodland.

There has been a rapid development and utilization of three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies in engineering, health care, and dentistry. Like many technologies in overlapping disciplines, these techniques have proved to be useful and hence incorporated into the forensic sciences. Therefore, this paper describes how the potential of using 3D printing is being recognized within the various sub-disciplines of forensic science and suggests areas for future applications. For instance, the application can create a permanent record of an object or scene that can be used as demonstrative evidence, preserving the integrity of the actual object or scene. Likewise, 3D printing can help with the visualization of evidential spatial relationships within a scene and increase the understanding of complex terminology within a courtroom. However, while the application of 3D printing to forensic science is beneficial, currently there is limited research demonstrated in the literature and a lack of reporting skewing the visibility of the applications. Therefore, this article highlights the need to create good practice for 3D printing across the forensic science process, the need to develop accurate and admissible 3D printed models while exploring the techniques, accuracy and bias within the courtroom, and calls for the alignment of future research and agendas perhaps in the form of a specialist working group.