Last night on British TV there was a documentary about the archaelogical search for the body of Richard III - apparently a victim of progogand after his death that made him out to be a tyrant and generally bad person; something perpetuated by Shakespeare's characterization.
In this instance those with an interest had the clues that his body had been interred at the Freyfriars in Leicester and not thrown in a river as legend had it. They crowdsourced the funds to undertake the excavation in a the tarmac carpark of a local government office.
At the start the professionals were commenting that they rarely go looking for something specific as they rarely find it. Instead they have more general searches and with luck chance up on what they hope to find.
The scarey thing in this instance is that it appears that in this instance they had the specific objective of finding the body of Richard III and the first find in the first trench turned out to be him...at least "beyond academic doubt".
The digger chanced upon a leg bone that was not initially given any significance, but covered up. As it was subsequently excavated the excitement grew as a curved spine and damaged skull was uncovered.
With a degree of caution the investigation then looked at dating the bones and the cause of death until finally they did a DNA comparison with a (the only?) known descendant. This clinched the deal.
What they do with the body now I do not know, but I found the documentary interesting and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history or archaeology.
It also proves that sometimes it pays to go looking for the specific even it the common wisdom is that there is little or no chance of finding it. Sometimes life just works.
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