The ancient world, rebuilt from evidence.
Zayne Forge reconstructs what time has taken — sites, objects, people and the life around them — from the archaeological record, for museums, documentaries, publishers and film.
What we reconstructWhatever survives in part, shown whole.
A reconstruction is only as good as the evidence under it. Each one begins with what was found and ends with an image a viewer can stand inside.
Sites and architecture
Temples, forts, cities and settlements shown as they stood — from excavation plans, surviving fabric and comparable sites of the same period.
Objects and artefacts
Vessels, tools, sculpture and ornament restored to their complete form, with the surviving fragment always distinguishable from the reconstruction.
People and dress
Faces, clothing and adornment rebuilt from remains, burial goods and the way a period depicted itself.
Life and landscape
Daily life, trade, rivers and fields — the setting that makes a single find make sense.
Ancient and extinct life
The studio's founding discipline: the animals of past worlds, rebuilt from fossil and skeletal evidence.
MethodFrom the trench to the frame.
The same discipline as every Zayne Forge project, with one rule added: evidence and inference are never allowed to blur into each other.
- 01
Evidence
Excavation reports, site plans, surviving objects, museum records and published scholarship are gathered and read before anything is drawn.
- 02
Hypothesis
Each missing part is reasoned from the evidence and from comparable finds of the same period and place — and every choice is written down.
- 03
Reconstruction
The form is built with the studio's own systems: identity and proportion held consistent, light and material obeying one law across every view.
- 04
Review
Specialists in the period review the work at gates, while it can still change. A disputed detail is resolved or shown as uncertain — never hidden.
- 05
Delivery
Final images, film or sequences, with a written record of what is evidenced and what is inferred, and the usage rights defined in the agreement.
ReconstructionsFrom the studio's record.
Reconstructions are added here as they are cleared for publication.
Who it is forFor those who explain the past.
Museums and galleries
Gallery panels, large-format prints and moving images that show a find in the world it came from.
Documentary and film
Reconstructed sites, objects and people that hold up across shots, at cinema resolution.
Education and publishing
Illustrations for books, textbooks and papers, with the evidence behind each one on record.
Heritage and tourism
Views of a monument as it was, for visitor centres, guides and interpretive media.
Start a projectCommission a reconstruction.
Tell us what survives, where and from when, and what the reconstruction is for. Every project starts with the evidence you already have.