The Death of Richard III

I went to a talk on the final minutes of Richard III in Cramond Village Hall this morning. This was an updated version of the talk that Bob Woosnam-Savage, Curator of European Edged Weapons at the Royal Armouries in Leeds had given at the Leicester conference on March 2nd this year.
It's quite remarkable how the king's skeleton keeps providing more information for investigators. Part of this is because we know more about the lifestyle and status of Richard than we do about most of the people that archaeologists are usually able to study, and part because we know about the particular circumstances of his death.
As an example, we know that there's no possibility of Richard having been struck by arrows, but his skull had injuries of a type identified as arrow wounds by the team who worked on the Towton dig. These wounds now look much more likely to have been inflicted by daggers, evidence of close-up and personal fighting.
Also worthy of mention are the roundworms that were found in the area of the king's abdomen, and the proposed study of the plaque on his teeth which might reveal what he had been eating in the weeks or days before his death. Archaeological science is progressing very fast these days!
A couple of other things worthy of mention are that the Bosworth battlefield is yielding a large amount of shot, more than any other European battlefield site yet examined, indicating that there were far more cannon and handgonnes in use in the 15th century than the historical sources mention, and that the account of Richard's death recorded by Jean Molinet fits the information now being given up by the king's skeleton far more closely than any of the other sources and needs to be reassessed in the light of this.