© 2001 Photo P.Plailly E.Daynes Eurelios – Reconstruction Elisabeth Daynes, Paris © 2009 Photo E.Daynes – Reconstruction Elisabeth Daynes, Paris
© 2001 Photo P.Plailly E.Daynes Eurelios – Reconstruction Elisabeth Daynes, Paris
© 2006 Photo P.Plailly E.Daynes Eurelios – Reconstruction Elisabeth Daynes, Paris
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as the diet, age of individual, time and cause of death and the environment in which they lived. Once the skull is finished, the layering of the muscles begins, and later the layers of skin. She then adds the finishing touches and details, the wrinkles, expressions and defects that breathe life into the figure. Since the creation of her studio, Elisabeth Daynes has worked in many countries across Europe, such as Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, and all over the world, from Mexico and Japan to South Africa. She is recognised across the globe as the best in her field, and among her creations is that of our very own Gibraltar Child. The Gibraltar Child was discovered in Devil’s Tower Rock Shelter, North Front, Gibraltar, by the first female professor at Cambridge University, archaeologist Dorothy Garrod, in 1926. There were five cranial fragments recovered, which are now in the Natural History Museum, London. A team of experts from the University of Zurich, which included Christophe P.E. Zollikofer and Marcia S. Ponce de Leon, used computer tomography techniques to provide a 3D skull
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • AUGUST 2010
reconstruction and, as a result of this, study details of the inner ear were brought to light, confirming that the age of death of the Gibraltar Child was approximately four years. The Gibraltar Museum has close research collaboration with the University of Zurich team, and the latter have attended Calpe Conferences as speakers. After the University of Zurich experts provided a 3D skull reconstruction, Elisabeth did the reconstruction on the stereolithography of the skull in 2001. From the fossil, to the hyper realistic colouration, it took approximately one
month to do the bust, which is currently at the University of Zurich. The breathtaking full body of the Gibraltar Child took approximately two months to complete, and currently resides in the new Krapina Museum in Croatia. The accuracy of the detail in the sculpture, makes it look incredibly human, rightfully naming our little ancestor a true masterpiece in its own right, at the hands of a unique artist, Elisabeth Daynes. n Special thanks to Atelier Daynes, and the Gibraltar Museum, for information and photos provided.
Dorothy Garrod Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod (5 May 1892–18 December 1968) was a British archaeologist, and the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair. This was mainly due to her exceptional work on the Palaeolithic period. She was born in Oxford, and attended Newham College, Cambridge. She excavated in Gibraltar between 1925 and 1926 (when she found the GIbraltar Child), and led an exhibition in South Kurdistan, in 1928. She was made Disney Professor of Archaeology in 1939, and was the first female professor at Cambridge. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1952, and was awarded a CBE in 1965.
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