Checkmate: Comparing the skeletal evidence of the death of King Richard III with other medieval weapon trauma (A paper presented at the INRAP International symposium "The archaeology of violence: wartime violence, mass violence" 2th, 3th and 4th of October 2014 - Louvre Lens Museum (original) (raw)
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The Posthole, 2019
The Battle of Bosworth has long been viewed as an iconic moment in British history: immortalised by Shakespeare, the battle saw the last death in battle of a reigning English monarch, the end of three decades of civil war, and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty (Burne 1950, 286; Foard & Curry 2013, xiii; Battlefields Trust 2016). The recent announcements of the discovery and identification of the Richard III’s skeleton under a car park in Leicester and artefacts from the Bosworth battlefield have received much publicity (Mack 2014; Elton 2015). Archaeological investigation appears to have proved the location of the battlefield, some 3 kilometres away from the traditional site (Foard 2010, 26), and the skeleton has been subject to a great deal of scientific analysis, as well as public debate. The recent controversial decision by Historic England to allow development on the edge of the battlefield (Johnson 2018) has kept Bosworth in the public eye and brought into question the wider issue of the protection of England’s battlefields. Beginning with an introduction to battlefield archaeology and the impact of the battle itself, this article will discuss the impact of investigations at Bosworth and the search for Richard’s remains, and how evidence relating to these discoveries has implications for research within the field of battlefield archaeology.
An Anglo-Saxon Quadruple Weapon Burial at Tidworth : A Battle-Site Burial on Salisbury Plain ?
2016
A mid-6th century grave on a spur just east ofTidworth was found to contain the bodies of jour male adults, all buried at the same time and accompanied by weapons. The nature, location and date of the grave make it seem possible that it was connected with the resurgence of military activity in this area after AD 552. DISCOVERY AND E X C A V A T I O N In 1992, soldiers digging a trench just east of, and above, South Tidworth came across human bones. The military authorities notified one of the authors (RE) who began a rescue excavation which uncovered the remains of three skeletons. Because of time constraints, the excavation of what had by then been recognized as an Anglo-Saxon multiple grave had to be stopped, and the excavated area was backfilled. The excavation was concluded in the summer of the same year by the other author (HH) with archaeology students from the University of Reading. The site (SU 24254755) is located on Salisbury Plain, virtually on the Hampshire-Wiltshire bor...
Antiquity, 2013
Archaeologists today do not as a rule seek to excavate the remains of famous people and historical events, but the results of the project reported in this article provide an important exception. Excavations on the site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, demolished at the Reformation and subsequently built over, revealed the remains of the friary church with a grave in a high status position beneath the choir. The authors set out the argument that this grave can be associated with historical records indicating that Richard III was buried in this friary after his death at the Battle of Bosworth. Details of the treatment of the corpse and the injuries that it had sustained support their case that this should be identified as the burial of the last Plantagenet king. This paper presents the archaeological and the basic skeletal evidence: the results of the genetic analysis and full osteoarchaeological analysis will be published elsewhere.
The Face of Battle? Debating Arrow Trauma on Medieval Human Remains from Princesshay, Exeter
2020
Physical evidence of weapon trauma in medieval burials is unusual, and evidence for trauma caused by arrowheads is exceptionally rare. Where high frequencies of traumatic injuries have been identified, this is mainly in contexts related to battles; it is much less common in normative burials. Osteological analysis of one context from an assemblage of disarticulated and commingled human bones recovered from a cemetery associated with the thirteenth-century Dominican friary in Exeter, Devon, shows several instances of weapon trauma, including multiple injuries caused by projectile points. Arrow trauma is notoriously difficult to identify, but this assemblage shows that arrows fired from longbows could result in entry and exit wounds in the skull not incomparable to modern gunshot wounds. Microscopic examination of the fracture patterns and spalling associated with these puncture wounds provides tentative evidence that medieval arrows were fletched to spin clockwise. These results have...
Perimortem trauma in King Richard III: a skeletal analysis
FREE TO ACCESS FROM THE LANCET LINK ABOVE Background Richard III was the last king of England to die in battle, but how he died is unknown. On Sept 4, 2012, a skeleton was excavated in Leicester that was identified as Richard. We investigated the trauma to the skeleton with modern forensic techniques, such as conventional CT and micro-CT scanning, to characterise the injuries and establish the probable cause of death. Methods We assessed age and sex through direct analysis of the skeleton and from CT images. All bones were examined under direct light and multi-spectral illumination. We then scanned the skeleton with whole-body post-mortem CT. We subsequently examined bones with identified injuries with micro-CT. We deemed that trauma was perimortem when we recorded no evidence of healing and when breakage characteristics were typical of fresh bone. We used previous data to identify the weapons responsible for the recorded injuries. Findings The skeleton was that of an adult man with a gracile build and severe scoliosis of the thoracic spine. Standard anthropological age estimation techniques based on dry bone analysis gave an age range between 20s and 30s. Standard post-mortem CT methods were used to assess rib end morphology, auricular surfaces, pubic symphyseal face, and cranial sutures, to produce a multifactorial narrower age range estimation of 30–34 years. We identified nine perimortem injuries to the skull and two to the postcranial skeleton. We identified no healed injuries. The injuries were consistent with those created by weapons from the later medieval period. We could not identify the specific order of the injuries, because they were all distinct, with no overlapping wounds. Three of the injuries—two to the inferior cranium and one to the pelvis—could have been fatal. Interpretation The wounds to the skull suggest that Richard was not wearing a helmet, although the absence of defensive wounds on his arms and hands suggests he was still otherwise armoured. Therefore, the potentially fatal pelvis injury was probably received post mortem, meaning that the most likely injuries to have caused his death are the two to the inferior cranium.
2018
The Battle of Cheriton in 1644 was a major turning point in the English Civil War, being one of the first Parliamentarian victories. However, despite its importance in English history, the Battle of Cheriton has not received the attention of scholars in the way that battles such as Edgehill and Naseby have. This paper aims to gain a new understanding of the events of the battle by analysing the assemblage of small finds that has been collected from the battlefield site. The result of this analysis is that the true location can now be provided with some certainty, along with the range of weapons used at the battle. The results also shed new light on the interpretation of the events of the battle and aid the protection of the site as an area of historical importance.