Reconstruction of "witches" face from the 18th century

Angela

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See:
https://www.archaeology.org/news/6059-171031-scotland-witchcraft-reconstruction

Poor woman.

"DUNDEE, SCOTLAND—According to a report in BBC News, forensic artist Christopher Rynn of Dundee University’s Center for Anatomy and Human Identification used twentieth-century photographs of a now missing skull to create a 3-D digital reconstruction of Lilias Adie, a Scottish woman who died in 1704 while imprisoned for the crime of witchcraft. In the nineteenth century, her remains were exhumed from a grave on the Fife coast that had been covered with a large stone, presumably to keep her rising from the grave. Adie was tortured and interrogated in prison in an effort to get her to name other women as witches. But she only pointed the finger at those who had already been named. Adie is thought to have taken her own life."

lilias-adie-torryburn-witch-lg.jpg


We still had "wise women", and men too when I was growing up, but I don't remember hearing about them being persecuted, although it may have been different in the Middle Ages.

I've read quite a bit about the Salem witch trials and watched the movies too. It's all very fascinating, as an exercise in group or mob psychology if nothing else, and how politics informs all of these things.
 
A friend's grandmother would have likely been considered a "witch" back in the day. She had an uncanny "sixth" sense or "second sight"/an da shealladh. I kid you not she knew things before they happened. Not entirely unheard of as the area where she's from there are tales of other people with similar foreseeing talent.
 

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