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I saw this article about the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam from the American NRP site. It states that “on this morning (17th September) 150 years ago, Union and Confederate troops clashed at the crossroads town of Sharpsburg, Md. The Battle of Antietam remains the bloodiest single day in American history. The battle left 23,000 men killed or wounded in the fields, woods and dirt roads, and it changed the course of the Civil War” before explaining how.

What struck me however it the somewhat embarrassing truth that I know almost nothing meaningful about the American Civil War.  I had not even heard of the Battle of Antietam. We in Europe are always so quick to be critical of perceived US parochialism. Perhaps we should look at ourselves a bit first…

Mr Kydd.

A few weeks ago I posted a story about archaeologists searching for the grave of Richard III. Yesterday they held  this news conference about remains they had found under a council car park in Leicester. As the report states, “the remains had spinal abnormalities and a “cleaved-in skull” that suggest it could be Richard III.”

It will be very interesting to see how the find changes our understanding of a man who has been unquestionably attacked by 109 years of Tudor propaganda.

Mr Kydd.

Everything about Richard III is just interesting. He is famed as the last English king of England (remember the Tudors were Welsh and the Stuarts were Scottish) and the last King to die in battle (at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485). He is also said to be the target of very unfair propaganda attacking his physical appearance (hump and all) and his actions (many now question if it was he who ordered the murder of the princes in the Tower).

Whilst there is doubt over whether his body was stripped naked (see Harry other Royals have got there before you) and thrown in the river, it does seem that Richard met an undignified end.

Now there is an excellent piece of archaeology from the University of Leicester seeking to identify his final resting place. This work (the Greyfriars project) stems in part from the recent work that relocated the site of the Battle of Bosworth (you may like to refer to the earlier post discussing this revision of the location of the battle site). This article from the Daily Telegraph discusses what the project is trying to achieve.

Mr  Kydd.

In the 1980s a mass burial pit from the 1340s Black Death  was discovered at Spitalfields in London. This report was typical, stating  “it contained two mass burial trenches and a mass burial pit, densely filled with several hundred articulated skeletons, as well as many individual graves…it was…one of two emergency burial grounds created to cope with the Black Death epidemic. It is currently the largest and most comprehensively excavated Black Death cemetery in England.”

Except that it now seems that it isn’t. This report from yesterday’s Observer suggests that recent research, “including radiocarbon dating of the bones and geological data from across the globe – shows for the first time that mass fatalities in the 13th century were caused by one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 10,000 years“. As one monk put it at the time, “The north wind prevailed for several months… scarcely a small rare flower or shooting germ appeared, whence the hope of harvest was uncertain… Innumerable multitudes of poor people died, and their bodies were found lying all about swollen from want… Nor did those who had homes dare to harbour the sick and dying, for fear of infection… The pestilence was immense – insufferable; it attacked the poor particularly. In London alone 15,000 of the poor perished; in England and elsewhere thousands died.”

This is not a small reworking of the edge of an argument; rather it is a complete and fundamental reevaluation, made possible by advances in carbon dating. The message for us is clear, History, and historical interpretation has never been static, but now more than ever our assumptions are being challenged by science..

Mr Kydd.

The contents of which photograph do you consider to be more valuable ? These two images come from the two news stories below. In a material sense, the answer is of course clear cut -the coins have an estimated value in excess of £10 million. However, the iron slag pictured below perhaps tells the historian more.

In May it was announced that over 50,000 Roman coins in Jersey. This article from The Guardian is developed well by this BBC News report. Although less glamourous, this report suggesting that the Highlands were a centre of metal production in Iron Age might actually be more significant to us as historians. This is because it potentially could change our understanding of trade and society in Iron Age Europe. Perhaps the north of Scotland was part of an intergrated and specialised economy.

Worth comes in many forms…

Mr Kydd

Churchill is meant to have once said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”. Perhaps it is an obvious point to suggest that History tends to be written by the winners, but that does not stop it being a valid one as the example of Alexander the Great proves. Few men in the European subconscious have a better reputation. This BBC report starts off by stating the tradition view that  “Alexander the Great, feted in Western culture as the conqueror of the Persian Empire and one of the great military geniuses of history.” 

However Professor  Ali Ansari (the Institute of Iranian Studies, St Andrews University) then goes on to explain  that “the influence of Greek language and culture has helped establish a narrative in the West that Alexander’s invasion was the first of many Western crusades to bring civilisation and culture to the barbaric East. But in fact the Persian Empire was worth conquering not because it was in need of civilising but because it was the greatest empire the world had yet seen, extending from Central Asia to Libya.”

Have a read and see what you think. There is also a Radio 4 Series if you are interested.

Mr Kydd

As many of you will have the misfortune to know Tudor history is really my bag, and there certainly has been a lot of it in the news recently. As such, I thought it might be helpful if I posted the links here.

Here Clifton Davies argues that “research shows the term “Tudor” was barely ever used during the time of Tudor monarchs” continuing that “years of trawling through contemporary documents yielded almost no references – with only one poem on the accession of James I (James VI of Scotland) recognising the transition from Tudor to Stuart”.

Here Philippa Gregory and Dr Robert Hutchinson discuss on the Today programme why novelists are so fascinated with the Tudor period. “We’re interested now in historical realism… the grime of it, as well as the rare moments of glamour at the top.”

Here Dr Steven Gunn explains why “between 1558 and 1560, almost three-quarters of fatal accidents took place during the summer months.” This can be blamed on “cart crashes, dangerous harvesting techniques, horse accidents and windmill mangling were among the perils facing the Tudor farm worker.” It is of course a bit of fluff, but also perhaps a reminder that little of the renaissance reached the rural England where over 85% of people lived.  This link goes on the strange and stupid deaths of many Tudors (if you accept that term !) – however, as the poster below shows, there were other surefire ways to die…

Mr Kydd