Forensic Anthropology Facial Reconstructions

Students are placed into groups of 3-4. They are provided with either a skull of Julius Ceasar or Neaderthal man. These skulls were facial reconstruction kits bought from a science supplier catalog. Using their knowlege of Forensic Anthropology and Facial Reconstruction, they placed skin depth markers (provided in the kit) on specified areas of the skull. Modeling clay is then applied to cover only the depth of the skin markers. This gives the skin the appropriate skin depth for that particular skull. Once the "skin" has been applied, then students were able to take liberties in constructing lips, ears, eyes/eyelids and hair, but still using their knowledge base of Forensic Athropology (if you don't know hair or eye color, always use brown; the lips are as wide as the length of the ear). Their final product was then photographed as a "missing person" and placed in the school newspaper and website (just for fun). The students then indiviudually wrote a RAFT assignments, in which they were the crime scene investigator acting as an expert witness at a trial of a murder suspect. Their role was to identify the person, state manner and cause of death, and any events that led up the death and those that caused death. Their RAFT writing assignment is a creative writing assignment, but must include specified details related to Forensic Anthropology, such as how they determined the race and sex, stature, trauma, time of death, cause and manner of death, etc.