Possible Richard III Discovery Sparks Controversy

[Buster's Uncle]

Possible Richard III Discovery Sparks Controversy
By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer | LiveScience.com – 17 hrs ago.. .

 
Archaeologists may have uncovered the skeleton of the lost English king Richard III. But if they have, what should be done with the remains?
 
That question is causing contention among Richard III enthusiasts, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The University of Leicester, which is overseeing the excavation and analysis of the remains, has jurisdiction over the remains, but various societies dedicated to the king have their own opinions.
 
Two groups, the U.S.-based Richard III Foundation and the Society of Friends of Richard III based in York, England, argue that the remains should be reburied in York, because Richard III was fond of that city, the Journal reported. The Richard III Society, which has been involved with the archaeological dig in Leicester that uncovered the remains, is officially neutral — a stance which itself has triggered anger.
 
"The lack of respect that's been shown to his remains has grated our membership," Joe Ann Ricca, founder and president of the Richard III Foundation, told the Wall Street Journal.
 
Richard III's History
 
Richard III ruled from 1483 to 1485. He died in battle at Bosworth Field in the War of the Roses, and English civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York.  After his death, Richard III's body was brought to Leicester and buried at Greyfriars Church. A century later, Shakespeare wrote "Richard III," a play fictionalizing the dead king's life.
 
The location of both the Greyfriars church and Richard III's grave were eventually lost to history. In August 2012, however, University of Leicester archaeologists began excavating a city council parking lot in Leicester, under which the remains of the Greyfriars church were thought to be. [See Images of the Richard III Discoveries]

 Soon, the archaeologists unearthed floor tiles, window frames and other remnants of the medieval church. In less than a month, the team found a battle-bruised skeleton with signs of trauma to the skull and an arrowhead lodged in the spine, consistent with Richard III's cause of death.
 
The skeleton also had scoliosis, or an abnormally curved spine, consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard III's appearance.
 
Controversial remains
 
The team has not confirmed the remains to be Richard III's; the University of Leicester has said it will hold a press conference in the first week of February to announce results of the laboratory analysis of the bones.
 
"If the identity of the remains is confirmed, Leicester Cathedral will continue to work with the Royal Household, and with the Richard III Society, to ensure that his remains are treated with dignity and respect and are reburied with the appropriate rites and ceremonies of the church," the Very Reverend Vivienne Faull, the Dean of Leicester, said in a statement.
 
Petitions have sprung up online arguing that the reburial should take place at Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle. But the most vocal critics say that Richard III would have wanted to be buried in York, where he was reportedly building a chapel at the time of his death.
 
"Think about this being a member of your family," Charles Brunner, a Kansas bank teller and Richard III enthusiast, told the Wall Street Journal. "Where would you want them to go? Where they wanted to go or the town they were taken to after they were killed, where they were stripped bare and put on public display?"

http://news.yahoo.com/possible-richard-iii-discovery-sparks-controversy-202109970.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Bones of King Richard III Found
By Stephanie Pappas and Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience | LiveScience.com – 5 hrs ago.. .

 
The body of the lost and vilified English king Richard III has finally been found.
 
Archaeologists announced today (Feb. 4) that bones excavated from underneath a parking lot in Leicester "beyond reasonable doubt," belong to the medieval king. Archaeologists announced the discovery of the skeleton in September. They suspected then they might have Richard III on their hands because the skeleton showed signs of the spinal disorder scoliosis, which Richard III likely had, and because battle wounds on the bones matched accounts of Richard III's death in the War of the Roses.
 
The announcement comes a day after the archaeologists had released an image of the king's battle-scarred skull.
 
To confirm the hunch, however, researchers at the University of Leicester conducted a series of tests, including extracting DNA from the teeth and a bone for comparison with Michael Ibsen, a modern-day descendant of Richard III's sister Anne of York.
 
Indeed, the researchers found the genetics matched up between Ibsen and that from the skeleton. "The DNA remains points to these being the remains of Richard III," University of Leicester genetics expert Turi King said during a press briefing.
 
The history of Richard III
 
Richard III was born in 1452 and ruled England from 1483 to 1485, a reign cut short by his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the decisive battle in the English civil war known as the War of the Roses. [See Images of the Skull & Search for Richard III's Grave]
 
Richard III's historical reputation is a twisted one, rife with accusations that he had his two young nephews murdered to secure his spot on the throne. The Shakespeare play "Richard III" cemented the king's villainous reputation about 100 years after the monarch died.
 
But Richard III's true legacy is a source of controversy. According to the Richard III Society, which has been involved in the archaeological search for the king's remains, many of the crimes Shakespeare attributes to Richard III are on shaky grounds. Even the deaths of the young princes remain in dispute.
 
After the king's death in battle, he was brought to Leicester and reportedly interred at the church of the Grey Friars, a location long lost to history. Unsubstantiated rumors sprung up around the missing grave, such as that Richard III's bones had been dug up and thrown in a river, or that his coffin was used as a horse-trough.
 
Relying on historical records, University of Leicester archaeologists began excavating a city council parking lot in Leicester in August 2012 in search of the Grey Friars church. They soon found medieval window frames, glazed floor tiles and roof fragments, suggesting that they were on the right track.
 
Shortly thereafter, the team unearthed human remains, including both a female skeleton (possibly an early church founder) and a male skeleton with a spine curved by scoliosis. The male skeleton's skull was cleaved with a blade, and a barbed metal arrowhead was lodged among the vertebrae of the upper back.
 
New discoveries
 
An analysis of the skeleton, ongoing ever since, revealed many characteristics consistent with Richard III, including that the man died in his late 20s or 30s (Richard III supposedly died at age 32), and he had a slender, "almost female build," said Jo Appleby, the University of Leicester's osteology expert. [Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]
 
The man would've had so-called idiopathic adolescent-onset scoliosis, meaning the cause is unclear though the individual would have developed the disorder after age 10; the curvature would've put pressure on the man's heart and lungs and could've caused pain, Appleby said. However, unlike historical records would suggest, the skeleton of Richard III showed no signs of a withered arm.
 
Appleby and her colleagues found and examined 10 wounds on the skeleton, including eight on the skull. None of the wounds could have been inflicted after the body was buried, though some of the wounds are consistent with being post-mortem, possibly as a way to further humiliate the king in 1485, Appleby said.
 
What does the discovery mean for the king's villainous reputation?
 
"It will be a whole new era for Richard III," Lynda Pidgeon of the Richard III Society told the Associated Press. "It's certainly going to spark a lot more interest. Hopefully people will have a more open mind toward Richard."
 
Where will they be re-interred? The University of Leicester has jurisdiction over the remains, and said today the Richard III skeleton would be buried under Leicester Cathedral.
 
Other interested parties had voiced their own opinions: The Richard III Foundation and the Society of Friends of Richard III, based in York, England, argue the remains should be reburied in York, since the king was fond of that city. The Richard III Society has remained officially neutral. Meanwhile, some online petitions have argued the reburial should take place at Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Unorthodox]

Don't know why it hasn't really struck me before, but that whole skeletons still mostly in the ground look could be real fun to play with...

[Buster's Uncle]

Yep.  I had you in mond when I posted that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Did Richard III Really Have a Friendly Face?
By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com – 1 hr 22 mins ago.. .




 
William Shakespeare immortalized King Richard III as a villainous, sneering hunchback. But a new facial reconstruction of the skull of the rediscovered monarch has some people viewing him in a kinder, gentler light.
 
"It's an interesting face, younger and fuller than we have been used to seeing, less careworn, and with the hint of a smile," said Phil Stone, the chairman of the Richard III Society, which has been part of a recent effort with the University of Leicester to unearth and identify the remains of the lost king.
 
But facial reconstructions, even well-done ones, can be misleading. For example, bones tell scientists nothing about the size of someone's ears, how many forehead wrinkles they had, or whether they often smiled or habitually wore a frown.
 
"The reconstruction is a combination of science, history and art," said Kristina Killgrove, an anthropologist at the University of West Florida who was not involved in the research. "It likely bears a great resemblance to Richard III, but it's not his 'real' face the way we would think of a photograph representing a person's visage." [See Images of Richard III's Face and Skull]
 
The real Richard III
 
Richard III enthusiasts have reason to want to rehabilitate their beloved king's image. After his death in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, the king was reportedly stripped and beaten before a hasty burial in Leicester. The archaeological evidence — a battered skeleton shoved into a poorly dug grave — backs up this tale. The skeleton was identified as Richard III's because of its location, age, wounds and DNA links to modern descendents of the king. 

 Richard III came to power in 1483 after declaring his nephews, sons of the previous king, illegitimate. The two young boys were never seen in public again, fueling rumors that Richard had them killed. And then there was Shakespeare. The playwright penned the tragedy "Richard III" a century after the monarch's death, portraying him as a scheming hunchback, "deformed, unfinish'd" and "determined to prove a villain." [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]
 
Richard III's skeleton reveals that he did have scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that would not have formed a hunchback, but would have left him looking somewhat asymmetrical. Wounds to the buttocks also suggest that his body was stripped of armor and abused after death. But the rumors of murder and treachery are harder to support. The Tudors, the royal house that defeated Richard III and took over the monarchy after him, had political reasons to vilify their slain enemy, and some of the stories may have been propaganda.
 
Face out of history
 
From a historical sense, the facial reconstruction sheds little light on Richard III as a good or bad guy. Appearances can be deceiving, after all, and the lack of wrinkles and tranquil expression are artistic choices by Janice Aitken, a lecturer at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design of the University of Dundee, who painted the 3D replica of the reconstruction.
 
"My part in the process was purely interpretive rather than scientific," Aitken said in a statement, adding, "I drew on my experience in portrait painting, using a combination of historical and contemporary references to create a finished surface texture."
 
The face shape and structure, however, is based on strong science. To reconstruct faces, forensic scientists look for features on the skull bones that indicate where muscles would attach. Other clues to outward looks include the size and prominence of the teeth and the the width of the nasal opening and the size and shape of the cheekbones, said Caroline Wilkinson, the University of Dundee researcher who led the Richard III reconstruction project.
 
"I'm not sure that this reconstruction tells us anything about him as a person in terms of his chracter, but it may help in some way to expel some of those myths, mostly perpetuated by Shakespeare, as to his kind of 'monster' appearance," Wilkinson told LiveScience. The researchers did include Richard III's scoliosis on the bust, building one shoulder higher than the other.
 
One of the oldest techniques of facial modeling involves physically putting clay on the skull (or a cast of the skull), using averages from real faces to determine how thick the flesh would likely be. The method can work, Killgrove told LiveScience, "but often looks like a craft project."
 
Newer techniques involve precise measurements and computer modeling, Killgrove said. In the case of Richard III, Wilkinson and her colleagues used computed tomography (CT) scans of the battle-scarred skull and stereolithography, a type of 3D printing, to create a lifelike bust of the medieval king. The bust is set to be displayed in a planned visitor's center at the site of Richard III's burial in Leicester.
 
Whether or not the man in the bust has the same forehead wrinkles or precise skin tone as the real Richard III, reconstructions can draw people in to history and humanize the past, Killgrove said. For Philippa Langley, a screenwriter and Richard III Society secretary who helped push archaeologists to search for the king's bones, the new bust had that effect.
 
"Seeing a true likeness of England's last Plantagenet and warrior king meant, for me, finally coming face-to-face with the man I'd invested four years searching for," Langley said in a statement. "The experience was breathtaking — one of the most overwhelming moments of my life. I wasn't alone in finding this an approachable, kindly face, almost inviting conversation. Perhaps I may be forgiven for adding a personal impression of loyalty and steadfastness, someone seemingly capable of deep thought."

http://news.yahoo.com/did-richard-iii-really-friendly-face-155322192.html

[Unorthodox]

I've always wanted to do that facial reconstruction stuff...

[Buster's Uncle]

I thought you would be interested.  Strikes me that you should have been an anthopologist and gotten to play with bones all the time...

[Zoid]