Welcome to Episode 3 of The Struggling Archaeologist’s Guide to Getting Dirty: Not More Mummies!

In this episode we get transported back to 15th century England to explore the exciting (and terrifying) world of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, kind of like the Montagues and Capulets without the teen love gone wrong. It’s a brutal world where if you’re not too careful you could end up looking like this….

Seriously, this is the newly discovered and identified skull of King Richard III, the infamous “Hunchback of York.” I’m proud to say that my kinda sorta alma mater, the University of Leicester, led excavations that uncovered the Medieval Greyfriars friary along with the internment of the King earlier this year. I am taking total credit, of course, because they really couldn’t have done it without me… joking aside, I’m really excited for all of the Richard talk that has been going on and so I couldn’t resist boring you with a short history of the Medieval monarchy and an analysis of Richard’s remains. And yes, I did resist the urge to sing something from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, thank you. If you were paying attention then you might have heard me mention something about a ginormous hole in his head and a really bad case of the “scolies” (that’s hood talk for scoliosis), and I promised pictures- so here you go!