How Forensics, Fine Art, and the Greek Soccer Team Revealed the Face of a 3,500-Year-Old Warrior

On a warm day in May 2015, husband-and-wife archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker were at a bank in Chora, Greece, when they got a call that changed their lives.

Their team had dug down about five feet in an olive grove near the Palace of Nestor at Pylos and hit bronze. “Metal was rare in the Early Mycenaean period—it is associated with the elite,” says Stocker.

The discovery, which unfolded over the next five and a half months to reveal spectacular weapons, armor, and combat-themed art, was the grave of the 3,500-year-old Griffin Warrior, whose name derives from the mythological half-eagle, half-lion creature depicted on an ivory cosmetic box also found in the excavation. Archaeology Magazine called it “one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in Greece over the past 50 years.” Many of these exquisite artifacts are on display at the Getty Villa Museum’s exhibition The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece, which runs through January 12, 2026.

An unexpected, incredible find

Part of the discovery’s rarity is that the team hadn’t expected to find much, if anything at all, while excavating in the olive grove, known as the Tsakonas Field. They had originally intended to dig in the Dimopoulos Field, also near the Palace of Nestor, hoping to learn more about the people who had lived outside the palatial complex. Due to legal delays, though, they were unable to excavate where they had hoped and instead received permission to dig in the olive grove, which was already owned by the Greek state.

Tsakonas had long been considered unpromising. Even in 1968, American archaeologist Carl Blegen had dug several trenches in the field but found nothing substantial. In the 1990s, geologists told Davis and Stocker that the area was too eroded to yield any discoveries. “So, finding the Griffin Warrior was never Plan A,” recalls Stocker. “For us, this dig looked like it was going to be a disaster,” adds Davis.

When the archaeologists found the Bronze Age warrior’s grave, it was immediately clear that they had discovered a rich burial, though one difficult to excavate. “The way I like to describe it is, imagine all the material in the grave was in a trash compactor,” says Davis.

The complexity of the site led Davis and Stocker to bring in Lynne A. Schepartz, a biological anthropologist, to help deal with the bones. Although most of them were removed in the field, the soil was extremely hard, and the excavators decided it would be better to remove the pelvic area and skull in large blocks of earth.

Since the bones obviously belonged to a single skeleton, Schepartz wondered if there were sufficient remains for her then colleague at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Tobias Houlton, to reconstruct a face for the warrior. She reached out, and Houlton responded enthusiastically.

Piecing together an ancient puzzle

Years before Houlton became a lecturer in craniofacial identification and forensic imaging at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, University of Dundee, he was a sculptor. It was his love of the medium, coupled with an interest in science, that led him to the study of (and a PhD in) forensic art. His work has also involved collaborating with international and national law enforcement agencies—including Interpol, the South African Police Service, Police Scotland, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—to assist in reconstructing faces from recovered remains found at crime scenes or in unmarked graves. He even helped link missing people with unidentified skulls by superimposing old 2D images with 3D skull scans. This technique helps assess the likelihood that the photo and skull belong to the same person.

When Houlton arrived at Pylos and assessed the block of earth containing the skull fragments, he wasn’t sure if he would have enough osteological material to reconstruct the ancient warrior’s face. “It was actually a miracle that we managed to get as much of the skull as we did,” he says. “Often the skull completely disintegrates in those acidic Greek soils.”

When the block with the skull was lifted and excavated, the team built an extensive record of where all the different bone fragments had been found. Then they photographed and 3D-scanned each piece. For the most part, they were able to make logical sense of the fragments’ order and how they would form the skull. Houlton was reenergized; perhaps enough had survived to build a face after all.

A face emerges

Houlton imported the skull scans into Geomagic Freeform. This powerful 3D design software includes a haptic feedback device that looks like an arm with a pen-like tool attached to it. This allowed Houlton to utilize the program like a sculptor—he used the tool to create a clay surface on top of the skull, then modeled and manipulated it the way hands would work clay. Freeform also generated tissue, muscles, and fat based on the dimensions and morphology of the skull.

One challenge with the Griffin Warrior’s facial reconstruction was that some of the bones surrounding the nasal aperture had disintegrated. To fill in those gaps, Houlton generated an “average face template” of 50 Greek athletes, drawing heavily from the national soccer team. “We did know that the Griffin Warrior was someone who was young, healthy, and strong,” observes Houlton. “His preserved skeleton had a distinctly muscular appearance.”

Despite a bit of speculation about the nose, Houlton is confident regarding the rest of the face’s accuracy: the bones containing the brow area, forehead and eyebrow shapes, cheekbones, and much of the jawline were well-preserved. When it came time to add (or not add) hair, Houlton says his decision was determined by the trends of the time as represented in art. “It wasn’t considered fashionable for a Mycenaean male of his status to have facial hair, so chances are he would have removed that. At the same time, he likely wore his hair long.” Supporting this hypothesis, no fewer than five ivory combs were found alongside the Griffin Warrior’s body. Houlton also used historical averages for the wavy texture of the warrior’s hair, as well as his brown eye color.

When the warrior, estimated to have been between 30 to 35 years old at the time of his death, made his online debut in 2016, he was universally dubbed handsome. “If an actor were to play him, it might be Harry Hamlin from Clash of the Titans,” says Houlton.

Putting people back in prehistory

Davis and Stocker agree that working with Houlton was not only fun but also an experience they’d never had before. “It’s really different to have a face associated with skeletal material,” says Davis. “What Toby created made the Griffin Warrior real, which is very moving.” Davis recalls that when he and Stocker first revealed the reconstructed face in a lecture setting, many people gasped. A Greek friend seated in the audience even shouted, “My God, it’s my son!”

Facial reconstruction does foster a more personal connection with the past and builds a better picture of ancient daily life, the couple says. This technology has also given us the faces of the Lagmansören Woman, Stafford Road Man, and Cheddar Man (named after Cheddar Gorge, the place where he was discovered, and yes, the home of cheddar cheese). Additionally, archaeologists rely heavily on the artifacts buried with the remains to speculate about what prehistoric peoples’ lives were like. “Identity is far more complex than appearance or genetics alone,” comments Claire Lyons, curator of the Getty exhibition. “Over 1,400 objects in the Griffin Warrior’s grave cast light on how this man saw himself and how he was regarded by his family and community—as a ruler, religious leader, and war hero.” This is an important conclusion that has emerged from analysis by Davis and Stocker.

The presence of a face also increases the chances of a person being remembered. “In Homer’s writings, it’s common for people to want to ensure that they are honored after they’re gone,” says Stocker. “They accomplish this through their exploits. I feel that in some small way, we’ve restored this individual’s honor by showing what a great warrior he was and exposing his magnificent burial to the public. I imagine that he would have been very proud to be remembered in this day and age for the great individual that he was in his lifetime.”

The Griffin Warrior lives on

Visitors to the exhibition will encounter the Griffin Warrior’s face for themselves, as well as selected luxury objects buried with him, including his spectacular gold and ivory sword hilt, cosmetic implements, sealstones, gold vessels, and four gold Minoan signet rings. These discoveries will be the subject of research and scientific analyses for years to come. “The essential importance of the Griffin Warrior lies in the great good fortune that his tomb was never plundered,” concludes Lyons. “Archaeologically excavated in relation to each other, the grave goods offer precious evidence for the rise of Mycenaean Pylos at a turning point in Greek prehistory.”

This exhibition was co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.