Alexis T. Boutin

Face to Face with the Past: Reconstructing a Teenage Boy from Early Dilmun

Since 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has analyzed the human skeletal remains and artifacts that Peter B. Cornwall excavated from Bahrain in the 1940s, now held in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology. One mode of interpretation and dissemination pursued by the DBP team is forensic facial reconstruction. The subject of the first reconstruction is a twelve- to fifteen-year-old male who lived during the Early Dilmun period (ca. 2050–1800 b.c.e.). The resulting sculpture incorporates skeletal data about his identity and health as well as visual cues grounded in archaeological and sociohistorical contexts. It will be one of two reconstructions at the center of a traveling museum exhibition beginning in 2013. The goal of the exhibition is to present members of past societies to the interested public in a tangible fashion that encourages empathy and an appreciation of our shared humanity.

A Skull’s Tale: From Middle Bronze Age Subject to Teaching Collection “Object”

In 1964, the American Expedition to Hebron began its first of three field seasons of archaeological work at Tell er-Rumeide (ancient Hebron) in the Palestinian territories. One discovery, Tomb 4, was a cave dated to the Middle Bronze Age II that held eight burials. Among these burials was a supine individual associated with a bronze toggle pin and large bronze dagger. Identified by excavators as an aged man, this burial was interpreted to belong to the well-documented Canaanite tradition of “warrior burials.” Approximately four decades later, Dr. William Poe, a participant in the Hebron expedition in 1966, donated a skull to Sonoma State University’s Anthropology Department. This skull is believed to be that of the “warrior” in Tomb 4 at Tell er-Rumeide. Bioarchaeological analysis and accompanying historical and archaeological research, taking place in preparation for the skull’s use in a teaching collection, are recontextualizing these remains. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence from osteology, archaeology, and oral history, the story of this skull can be explored not only from his life to his death but from a subject of Canaanite Hebron to an object of study in modern-day California.

Old bones, digital narratives: Investigating the Peter B. Cornwall Collection in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum

A joint team of archaeologists from the University of California, Berkeley and Sonoma State University are examining a collection of artifacts and skeletal material excavated by Peter B. Cornwall in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia in the 1940s and accessioned in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum. Motivated by modern innovations in the examination of skeletal materials and a greater awareness of broader Near Eastern history, we are considering this collection from a contemporary bioarchaeological perspective and in terms of the personal history of Peter B. Cornwall. In this article we discuss our progress, summarizing our analytical work on the objects and human remains, as well as our plans to document our research and the collections using a number of on-line platforms.