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Richard III's Bones Go For a Ride in a Spectrometer

An new isotope analysis of the king's bones revealed what he ate, what he drank, and where he traveled.

As soon as Shakespeare's version of Richard III cinches the crown, he orders the execution of his rivals. "But shall we wear these glories for a day?" he implores his companions. "Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?"

Spoiler alert: those glories don't last long for Richard. But though the maligned king was bludgeoned to death, dumped in an unmarked grave, and dynastically steamrolled by the Tudors, the 2012 exhumation of his body has thrust him back into the spotlight. His genome is being mapped, his medical condition has been revised, and now, thanks to an isotopic analysis of his bones released in The Journal of Archaeological Science this weekend, we even know what the last Plantagenet king ate and drank.

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This latest forensic investigation of Richard III's remains was conducted by the British Geological Survey, and is the most complete study of its kind of any Medieval monarch. The BGS team used a mass spectrometer to identify what isotopes were present in three key locations on the famous king's body—his teeth, femur, and ribs.

Each of these body parts sheds light on a distinct growth period, like creepy skeletal portals into Richard III's life. Different levels of carbon, strontium, nitrogen, oxygen, and lead isotopes provide clues about what the man's environment was like, how much pollution he was exposed to, and how his diet evolved alongside his rise to power.

Teeth, for example, develop in childhood, so Richard's five-century old smile provided a time capsule into his early years. Based on his dental composition, the BGS researchers were able to confirm that Richard had left his childhood home of Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire by the time he was about seven or eight.

From there, the team determined that he moved to an area with higher annual rainfall and older rocks. "The detail about the rocks is deduced from strontium isotope analysis as strontium gets incorporated into your teeth through the food you eat," Lamb told me over email.

"[Strontium] varies depending on the soil type and geology of where the food was grown/grazed," she said. "We know he was further west around the age of eight, as we have models of how the oxygen isotope values of groundwater change in the UK. They have higher values in the southwest and decrease as you move northeast, in line with the track of depressions over the UK."

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Analysis of the femur provided insight into the last 15 years of Richard's life, and suggested that he returned to eastern England as a young adult, where he had a diet befitting an aristocrat.

But by far the coolest results came from the rib analysis. Ribs regenerate themselves relatively quickly, providing a detailed snapshot of a subject's life about two to five years before death. Of course, in this case, that includes Richard's tumultuous final two years on Earth, when he was desperately trying to maintain a stranglehold over his many rivals in the War of the Roses.

But as stressful as his brief reign must have been, the rib analysis suggests that Richard III wasn't going hungry, at least. The team observed a marked difference in isotopic composition during his final years, suggesting the king was feasting on delicacies like fish, swan, and heron more than he ever had in the past.

He was also helping himself to much more wine than usual, but nobody can blame him there. Alcohol was closest thing to Xanax a beleaguered Medieval king could hope for.

The BGS study will be included in a documentary called Richard III: The New Evidence, which airs in the UK on Channel 4 this Sunday evening.

"We don't normally analyze individuals in so much detail," Lamb said of the new findings. "This type of life history reconstruction is unusual. Also, as we know the remains belong to Richard III, it is a unique chance to cross check the methodology we use."

For over 500 years, the bulk of what we know about this controversial king's life has been cherry-picked by the people who succeeded him. It's interesting to finally hear the real Richard's side of the story, even if only his bones can tell it.