This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.
The Lancet published a description of the perimortem trauma sustained by Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485.
The analysis used CT scans to minutely study the skeletal remains uncovered in September of 2012. The findings indicate Richard was likely unhorsed, kneeling, and unhelmed, but otherwise armored, when the fatal blows were struck to base of the skull. He suffered several other perimortem injuries, including nine injuries to the head and two, likely postmortem, injuries to the torso.
A short video accompanied the paper, and phys.org has a good write up of the skeletal analysis.
Those of you who are into Twitter might like to know there's a Twitter party going on today under #AskACurator, 688 museums are participating including our hometown heros: the upstanding folks at the Smithsonian Air and Space, so if you've got questions for curators pop them out under that hashtag. :)
This isn't so much a new discovery as new discoveries, but I've just discovered the Medieval Animal Data-Network, an aggregator? online journal? research group? dedicated to animals in the Middle Ages.
Front page has an article on evidence of baleen use in 13th-century Wales. Yes, whales in Wales.