ArchaeoBlog

Richard III: ‘When I saw the skull, the hair on the back of my neck stood up’

As far as Diana Thompson is concerned, the matter is beyond question. She hung a white boar flag from her front window the day she heard archaeologists had found the bones of a man with a twisted spine in a scruffy car park near her home in Leicester.

Sceptics may scoff, and results of an attempt to extract DNA and match it to descendants are not due until Christmas, but Thompson is adamant that the bones now resting in a safe in the archaeology and ancient history department of Leicester University are those of the last Plantagenet, Richard III, who rode out of Leicester on the morning of 22 August 1485 a king, and came back a naked corpse slung over the pommel of a horse.

I was fairly skeptical that they’d find anything at all, let alone be able to pin it to a single person, but now I’m not so sure. The background research they’d done seems to have conformed quite well with what they found in the ground, so perhaps it’s really him. Doubtful we’ll ever get anything like ‘proof’, but I’m more optimistic now.

Note that they also excavated the remains almost in isolation suits to avoid DNA contamination. I suspect that in many if not most cases this will end up being the norm.