Scottish reenactors have recreated the appearance of a woman sentenced to be burned at the stake in the early 18th century on charges of witchcraft.
Lilias Adi died in 1704 in prison, awaiting a fire: the court of the Scottish town of Fife sentenced her to death for witchcraft. During the torture, the woman confessed that she was a witch and had intercourse with the devil. A hundred years later, when scientific curiosity overcame the fear of the supernatural, her remains were exhumed and placed in a museum. And this year the specialists carried out a reconstruction, thanks to which we can get an idea of the appearance of the Scottish "witch".
Reconstruction specialist Christopher Wrynn of the University of Dundee's Center for Anatomy and Identity studied images of Adi's skull and used 3D reconstruction software to reconstruct her appearance. Perhaps this is the only posthumous portrait of a Scottish "witch" - most of the women accused of witchcraft were sentenced to be burned, and the sentences were carried out. Only death saved Adi's body from sharing their fate.
In an interview with BBC radio, Rinn notes that he deliberately tried to give Adi's face a neutral and benevolent expression. “Today you cannot look at her otherwise than as a victim of monstrous circumstances,” comments the reenactor, “this is how your relative or neighbor might look, so I specially worked to ensure that her gaze did not express anything bad.”
