Reconstructing Richard III: the man behind the myth
DNA detective work: identifying Richard III
Following questions about the validity of using a genetic sample from a modern day relative of Richard III to help identify his remains, Dr Turi King of the University of Leicester guides us through the process she used. I’m afraid I must start with a quick DNA primer! I promise to keep it short. Our DNA can [...]
CA 277
So it really is him, then. Unusually for archaeology all the strands of evidence point to the same conclusion. And what a conclusion it is: the skeleton found in Leicester Grey Friars carpark is that of Richard III ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ Archaeology is normally poorly suited to recover a specific object or individual. Dependent on [...]
Current Archaeology Awards 2013 – Photos
The below photos were taken at the Current Archaeology Awards 2013, held at the University of London’s Senate House as part of the Current Archaeology Live! 2012 conference on 1-2 March 2013. Each image below is to be credited to Current Archaeology/Aerial-Cam
PRESS RELEASE: The Search for Richard III wins prestigious award as Research Excavation of the Year following a record number of votes from the general public
Top honours for Research Excavation of the Year at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards went to University of Leicester Archaeological Services’ international headline-grabbing discovery of Richard III under a Leicester car park. This astonishing achievement has finally allowed the lurid comments by Tudor chroniclers about the physique of this most controversial king to be objectively assessed. Accepting the [...]
PRESS RELEASE: Canterbury Archaeological Trust wins prestigious award as Rescue Dig of the Year following a record number of votes from the general public
Top honours for Rescue Dig of the Year at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards went to Canterbury Archaeological Trust for their work at Folkestone Roman villa. First examined in 1924, coastal erosion prompted a re-examination of the site before it was lost forever. This revealed that the villa overlay a major Iron Age port of trade receiving large [...]
PRESS RELEASE: Roman Camps in Britain wins prestigious Book of the Year award following a record number of votes from the general public
Top honours for Book of the Year (sponsored by Oxbow Books) at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards went to Rebecca Jones for Roman Camps in Britain (published by Amberley). This volume brings to life the mostly ephemeral traces of the temporary fortifications built by the Roman army while engaged in military campaigns or construction projects in Britain. [...]
PRESS RELEASE: Time Team archaeologist Phil Harding wins Current Archaeology’s prestigious Archaeologist of the Year award for 2013, following a record number of votes from the general public.
Top honours for Archaeologist of the Year at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards went to Phil Harding. A household name following his appearance on 20 seasons of Channel 4’s Time Team, Phil’s enthusiasm for archaeology has inspired countless others to enter the discipline. As well as digging at some of Britain’s most iconic sites with [...]
Richard III exhibition opens in Leicester
A new free exhibition dedicated to the search for Richard III opened today (8 Feb) at Leicester’s Guildhall. Richard III: Leicester’s search for a king reveals the archaeological detective work that led to the rediscovery of Greyfriars church, the location of Richard’s grave, and the identification of his remains. Displays place these findings in their [...]
CA 276
Prehistoric standing stones are famously enigmatic, but some monuments may have more secrets in their past than was previously supposed. Recent excavations at Trefael indicate that a supposedly Bronze Age standing stone was deliberately recycled from a Neolithic tomb. Was this a knowing refashioning of a sacred landscape? Salt may be a seasoning taken for [...]
Stop all the spades, fill all the trenches in…
While browsing the web for fun archaeological things to share with our readers (it is Friday, after all!) we stumbled on this fantastic ‘Eulogy for Time Team’, based on W H Auden’s Stop All The Clocks. It was originally printed in the Australian edition of the Big Issue, and by the power of the internet (thanks everyone [...]
Reconstructing Richard III’s resting place
Two days after unveiling a reconstruction of the face of Richard III, Leicester experts have now recreated how Greyfriars, his final resting place, might have looked. Built in 1230, Greyfriars was one of the first Franciscan friaries to be established in England, just 6 years after the order came to Britain, but it was completely [...]
Face to face with Richard III
More than 500 years after his death, members of the public can look King Richard III in the eye once more, following the unveiling of a reconstruction of how he may have looked. Based on human remains found beneath a carpark in Leicester city centre by University of Leicester Archaeological Services, and recently identified as [...]
Richard III: found!
The human remains found beneath a city centre carpark last August are ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ those of Richard III.
Is this the skull of Richard III?
Is this the skull of Richard III? Today (4 February) the University of Leicester, with Channel 4, unveiled the world’s first photograph of the human remains found beneath a car park in Leicester city centre, interred in what was once the Grey Friars church. Later this morning archaeologists will announce the results of months of exhaustive [...]
Sands of Time: Domestic Rituals at the Links of Noltland
Rapid erosion has revealed spectacular Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology on the coast of Westray, Orkney. Contemporary with the Ness of Brodgar’s religious monuments but with a domestic focus, what can this settlement tell us about daily life in prehistoric Orkney? Hazel Moore and Graeme Wilson explained. Overlooking the North Atlantic on the island of [...]
CA 275
Orkney could be an open-air archaeology museum. Sites such as Skara Brae and Maes Howe fire the imagination with their spectacular preservation. Yet while many of the archipelago’s big-name sites were dug in the first half of the 20th century, fieldwork has not rested on its laurels. Today, Orkney continues to play a leading role [...]
A note from the Namur
In CA 273 we shared the story of HMS Namur, the 18th century Royal Navy warship found beneath the floorboards of the Wheelwrights Shop at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, and how her identity was revealed. We were very excited to subsequently receive the following message from two of our readers, Eunice and Ron Shanahan, all the way from [...]
