The principles of tissue depth, in this case along the median points of the skull, are the building blocks for forensic facial reconstruction. These points: vertex, glabella, naison, rhinion, sub-nasale, labrale superius, labrale inferius, mentolabial sulcus, pogonion, gnation, menton and gonion, provide us with a reasonably reliable, statistically established, method of creating the outline of a deceased's facial profile.
This then, was an exercise for me, to apply these basics on one of the many skulls collected by Union Surgeon, Dr. Reed B. Bontecou, in April of 1866. Bontecou traveled to the battlefields of Spotsylvania County, shortly before mustering out of the service, with the intent of collecting pathological specimens, specifically the crania of dead Confederate soldiers who's remains had been lying in situ since the battles nearly two and three years prior. The Union dead had been gathered and placed in temporary cemeteries in the summer of 1865. In contrast, many of the fallen southerners had been barely covered by comrades, and their bones bleached in the sun while their uniforms decayed around them. The region had been devastated by the war, and a dramatically reduced local population had yet to make any effort to provide better treatment, especially in such remote areas as the Wilderness.
This specific individual had received a severe trauma in the vicinity of the left ear, producing a large, fractured hole in the temporal area, but no exit wound. A good number of these skulls in this collection have the deadly projectile which ended their lives accompanying them, usually attached by wire near the entry site. This specimen does not.