Opening the Medieval Stone Coffin Found at the Richard III Burial Site

one of the great finds during the first dig after Richard the third was discovered was the uncovering of this intact stone coffin it's the first intact medieval stone coffin that's been excavated in Leicester during a modern excavation it was unfortunate we found it at the very end of the excavation we just ran out of time to look at it closer so we had to cover it back up and leave it in situ and you wouldn't believe how frustrating it is to have to cover something as great as it up and without knowing what's inside it so in 2013 the big plan was then to take off the lid of this stone sarcophagus and then to see what the contents were inside it there's another crack Kosmic [ __ ] tell the whole stone sarcophagus wasn't lifted in one piece partly because it was going to be too heavy and covered a crane on him I should have to reach right across the side and as we saw carefully cleaned off the top and down the sides it was fairly obvious that the weight of the lid of the coffin had started to crack the stonework and we didn't think it would lift intact if we went down the route of trying to lift the whole thing so we decided would lift the lid first we did think maybe we needed to get some lifting apparatus in to lift it but the site was so uneven it's an archaeological excavation that there was no way we were going to be able to bring something in without creating some very elaborate or scaffolding for it to sit on so in the end we went with the old-school method and we lifted up one end of the lid and managed the slide lifting straps underneath it and then nine of us lifted the lid off and moved it across the side inside then we found a more or less intact lead coffin so essentially it's a stone sarcophagus with an inner lead casket so now we were faced with the situation of them trying to extract the lead casket from out of the coffin but the stone coffin was really badly cracked although it was in situ in the ground well the weight of the lid had completely fractured the stonework so in the end we were able to carefully dismantle one side of the stone coffin using the existing crack lines so that we could slide a wooden plank underneath the lead coffin and just lift the wooden plank so the wooden plank took the weight and in the end it was quite a smooth and easy operation and they only took two of us to lift the lead coffin out of the stone coffin and we had it transported to Lester Royal Infirmary initially because there was a slight chance that the lead in a coffin had actually caused some organic preservation and the remains within it as it turned out after an examination with an endoscope it was clear that the person in this coffin had becomes skeletonized so the normal processes of decay had taken place this here yeah so opening up a lead coffin was an interesting challenge it's not something I've ever had to do before in my career but ladies very soft and in the end we decided what we do rather than try and break the solder of the seals of the coffin because that could sort destroy important archaeological information was that we'd cut a line round the base of the coffin lift the lid and sides off it and leave the base as a trade with the skeletal material on and is a little like opening a tin can is just a simple case of getting a knife in and cutting the lid and it cuts really smoothly locks the cutting yeah once we'd cut the lid and sides off and lifted them off what we had was basically the skeleton laid out on the lead base of the casket there was a few little fragments of linen or some sort of cloth material surviving at the base of the grave a little bit of cord still survived and these might be the remains of the shroud and a little bit of hair survived as well that was it otherwise it was just the skeleton that cord down there is is binding the shroud in my sling right so a grave like this very elaborate stone sarcophagus led in a casket buried in a very prominent position in the church close to the high altar you've got to think this person was important to the Friars and we do know the names of a few other people connected with the friary we have the names of a couple of Franciscan provincial ministers buried Lester for instance so it could it be someone like that but no it can't because it's a woman so that rules out any men connected with the friary but we do have the names of a few women associated with the friary we have seven altogether we know this woman was over 60 when she died stable isotope analysis of her bones suggests that she had a very high-status diet that she was eating a lot of fish and meat and in fact when you compare her diet with rich two-thirds it's only just below his adult diet and radiocarbon dating tells us that she died either in this or the latter half of the 13th century or in the 14th century so about 100 years at least before rich the third so we can take all this and apply it to that list of names and for a start we can rule three of them out because they all died in the 16th century so they're too late to be the skeleton of the four remaining that the big one is Eleanor countess are less that we know she was a patron of the friary but unfortunately she died in France and was buried in France as far as we know so it's unlikely to be her of the other three there's only one that we know for certain that is definitely buried in our friary church a name's Emma Holtz she's probably from never hold him in less tissue but that's about all we know about her we know she was buried around about 1290 in the friary Church and that's it we don't know her age at death we don't know what she did for a living we don't know what she looked like we don't have any descendents from her so despite having a known woman buried here and a skeleton with a set of attributes we can't link the two together and unfortunately this skeleton will always remain anonymous

Channel: University of Leicester

Views: 3,769,566

Rating: 4.8119626 out of 5

Keywords: Richard III, Richard Buckley, Mathew Morris, University of Leicester, ULAS, Archaeology, Medieval, Medieval Archaeology, Medieval King, Stone Coffin, Medieval Stone Coffin, Lead Lined Coffin, Skeleton, Exhumation, Human Remains, Richard III Of England (Monarch), History, Middle Ages (Event), Museum, Burial, Carl Vivian, Dead, Dead Body, Body, Coffin, Death, Grave

Id: xXvvV9WQ_1c

Length: 5min 50sec (350 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/zerbey]

Really interesting, a shame we have no idea who she is.

[u/7buergen]

man those unboxing videos are getting elaborate!