Richard III Suffered an Ignominious Burial, Researchers Find

An anonymous reader writes "Richard III may have been the King of England and the subject of a Shakespearean play, but even that couldn't keep him safe from ending up in a hastily-dug grave that ultimately became part of a parking lot, according to a new study published in the journal Antiquity."

Re:You don't say?

[bruce_the_loon]

Those readers who don't RTFA are doomed to make themselves look silly.

Two different articles two different topics in the articles, one a press release that the DNA matched and that it was Richard the 3rd, the new one on how he was buried in the grave.

Re:in otherwords

[bruce_the_loon]

No. It took researchers months to write an article, get it proof-read, submitted to a journal, peer-reviewed and finally published in the journal.

Re:Shakespeare???

[Hognoxious]

Um, Richard III died in 1495

1485. August 22nd, IIRC.

Re:Hastily-dug?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Sure. I performed an experiment called Read The Fucking Article (RTFA), which yielded this curious observation:

First of all, the grave Richard III was placed in was “badly prepared,” which, the researchers from the University of Leicester said, suggests gravediggers were in something of a rush to get the corpse underground.

It was found approximately 73 mm from the entrance to TFA, not very far in. Note the use of the phrase "First of all", which provides supporting evidence that it was near the entrance.

Re:in otherwords

[cusco]

Actually undisturbed soil retains its structure pretty well, and soil disturbed by burrowers like earthworms and moles only slightly less well. After the first six inches the ground remains pretty much untouched by anything but roots (which are transient and obvious phenomena) for thousands to millions of years. I've personally been to archeological excavations where you can clearly see the individual shovel and pick marks from a thousand or more years ago. The Burgess Shale shows silt layers from individual rainstorms 520 million years ago.