HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2024-09-06T14:51:27.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Opinion: The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn’t Richard III
items: Richard III returns
items: Rediscovering Richard III: the story of identifying a lost king
items: Stonehenge: a historian’s guide to visiting the stones
items: Stonehenge: everything you wanted to know (part two)
items: The secrets of Stonehenge: how was it built?

Opinion: The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn’t Richard III
type: item
date: 2022-10-07T11:59:14.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
description: As The Lost King arrives in cinemas, archaeologist Mike Pitts reflects on the difficult art of turning a true story into a movie
encoded: I’m an archaeologist, I love drama, and I am spoiled: in less than two years we have been given an unprecedented two movies about real excavations. Both are billed as being “based on a true story”. The Dig, released by Netflix in 2021, is about the uncovering in 1939 of an Anglo-Saxon king’s treasure ship at Sutton Hoo. The Lost King, appearing now in cinemas, features the extraordinary discovery of Richard III’s grave ten years ago. Kings, lost and found. Yet I find myself in a curious position. I loved The Dig for its cinematography and direction, and its evocative portrayal of archaeologists entering a past as the imminence of war shocked a country with an unknown future. I enjoyed The Lost King too. It has some strong performances and comic turns, and at its heart is the inspirational journey of a scorned visionary who is proved right. But I also found its storyline misleading, its portrayal of living people contentious, and its treatment of science and academia so off the wall that it could be accused of stoking deep state conspiracy theories about experts. Academics criticised The Dig for misrepresenting distinguished archaeologists, and they are doing the same of The Lost King. So here's my predicament. Already I am being called out by colleagues: how could I defend The Dig, yet complain about The Lost King? Car park king: a timeline of the discovery of Richard III In 2012, researchers and archaeologists found a skeleton under a car park in the city of Leicester. The remains were believed to be Richard III, the Plantagenet king who was killed at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 The two stories have much in common, apart from the obvious focus on an excavation. Both digs began with a woman with an instinct about a site. Edith Pretty, who owned the land at Sutton Hoo, had been visiting a spiritualist medium after the death of her husband, and it was said the experience had prompted her to investigate the mounds she could see from her house. Philippa Langley had a…

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Richard III returns
type: item
date: 2022-10-07T11:30:31.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: As The Lost King arrives in UK cinemas, ten years after the remains of Richard III were unearthed, Mike Pitts reflects on the astonishing discovery of the “king in the car park”
encoded: Ten years after the remains of Richard III were unearthed, and as The Lost King arrives in UK cinemas, archaeologist and author Mike Pitts reflects on the astonishing discovery of the “king in the car park”, which made headlines across the globe. Speaking with Rob Attar, he reveals how the dramatic breakthrough was made and what Richard’s remains can tell us about his life and death. More from Mike Pitts | The trouble with The Lost King, and it isn't Richard III Mike Pitts is the author of Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King (Thames & Hudson, 2014) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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Rediscovering Richard III: the story of identifying a lost king
type: item
date: 2022-09-30T10:57:46.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval kings and queens
description: Ten years ago a skeleton in a Leicester car park transformed our understanding of a medieval king, and turned him into a media sensation. Mike Pitts tells the remarkable story of the discovery of Richard III’s remains
encoded: Ten years ago – from 4 to 6 September 2012, to be precise – an unmarked grave was excavated beneath a car park in Leicester. All that survived of the person interred there was a skeleton. It might well have belonged to an anonymous medieval friar. After all, it was known that a friary had stood in the area before the Dissolution. Yet the bones bore a number of distinctive features that matched disputed historical details, encouraging researchers to explore another, tantalising possibility: could the remains be those of a more noteworthy and controversial historical figure? Months of intensive scientific study followed, and the world became focused on this unusual excavation. Then, in February 2013, archaeologist Richard Buckley – leader of the University of Leicester’s Grey Friars Project, which aimed to uncover that lost medieval friary – rose from his seat among a panel of historians and scientists, and addressed the overflowing press conference. “It is the academic conclusion of the University of Leicester,” he announced, “that, beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Greyfriars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England.” Read more | Who were the Plantagenets? This extraordinary excavation was the culmination of years of effort, and an unlikely dream come true – one that began in a bookshop 15 years earlier. Philippa Langley was a former newspaper sponsorship manager who wrote film scripts in her spare time. As she tells it, the story began for her when she walked into a Waterstones near her home in Edinburgh to pick up some holiday reading. She felt strangely drawn to a particular shelf where, without thinking, she picked up a book, paid, and left. It was an old biography of Richard III, which painted the king as a noble legislator besmirched by history. Here, thought Langley, was the big-screen story she had to tell. Car park king: a timeline of the discovery of Richard III In 2012, researchers and archaeologists f…

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Stonehenge: a historian’s guide to visiting the stones
type: item
date: 2022-02-22T12:29:52.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stone Age
subject: Stonehenge
description: Heading to the world’s most famous henge this spring and want to get the most from your visit? Archaeologist Mike Pitts offers a closer look at the site, with a handy guide that will have you scoping out the stones like an expert…
encoded: There’s a lot to do at Stonehenge, but I’ll start with the obvious: stones. There are many, and they’re not all the same. The path up to the site takes you to a close vantage point (and a good place for photos) from which you look south east across to the monument. Many are fallen on this side, so as you move to right and left you can see into the centre of the henge. The first thing to notice is that there are two sizes and shapes of stone. Most are large and slab-like, and include horizontal lintels: these are made from sarsen, a hard sandstone sourced from within 20 miles. The smaller more rounded pillars, with no lintels, are the bluestones. Most of these are igneous rocks brought from south-west Wales (behind you), a journey of more than 200 miles. The completed Stonehenge had a ring of 30 standing sarsens supporting a ring of 30 lintels. These surrounded five groups, each of two taller sarsens independently supporting a lintel, known as trilithons. The trilithons stood on a horseshoe plan open to the rising midsummer sun to the north-east (roughly to your left). Bluestones (many more than there are now) were arranged in a ring inside the sarsen circle, and more stood inside the horseshoe, again mirroring the plan. A closer look The more you look, the more you see. Every stone is different. Sarsens were heavily dressed with stone hammers, and when the light is right you can sometimes pick out effects of such work, shallow parallel grooves and smoothed surfaces. You can see many irregular hollows left from the original boulders. At the base of one large standing sarsen is a curious flat block: this is concrete, put there in the 1960s to fill a large natural hole that the authorities worried was unsafe. Look closely at the top of that stone and toward the right edge you can see a lump like an upturned bowl. This is a tenon, carefully carved, that would have fitted into a hollow or mortise in the lintel that it and its partner supported, to form a trilithon. The t…

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Stonehenge: everything you wanted to know (part two)
type: item
date: 2022-02-20T12:37:39.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
subject: Stonehenge
description: In the second episode of a two-part special, Mike Pitts answers listener questions on Britain’s most famous prehistoric site
encoded: In the second episode of this two-part special on Stonehenge, archaeologist and author Mike Pitts answers more listener questions on the most famous prehistoric monument in Britain. Speaking to David Musgrove, he discusses Stonehenge’s relationship with other prehistoric sites, its long legacy, and why we call it “Stonehenge”. Missed part one? Find it here Mike Pitts is the author of How to Build Stonehenge (Thames & Hudson, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3

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The secrets of Stonehenge: how was it built?
type: item
date: 2022-02-14T13:11:11.000Z
creator: Mike Pitts
subject: General prehistory
subject: Period
subject: Stonehenge
description: Where did Stonehenge’s megaliths come from? Were they transported to Wiltshire by glacier or human hand? And how long did this Neolithic building project take? As a major exhibition on Stonehenge opens at the British Museum, Mike Pitts uses the latest research to answer the big questions about the construction of this ancient wonder
encoded: Listen to this article: Where on Earth did the stones come from? New technology is pinpointing the sources of the huge monoliths Stonehenge shouldn’t be there. Its great standing stones – their total weight originally equivalent to that of 13 blue whales – loom starkly from a landscape without rock outcrops. So where were they quarried? The 12th-century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that giants had carried the megaliths from Africa to Ireland, and that Merlin then took them on to Salisbury Plain. Others such as the 16th-century lawyer John Rastell thought the stones had been moulded on the spot out of cement. The 18th-century antiquary William Stukeley observed that not all of the stones were of the same type. He agreed with an earlier suggestion that the largest – sandstone blocks known as sarsens – hailed from near Marlborough, about 20 miles north of Stonehenge. But what of the other, smaller monoliths known as bluestones? Africa and Ireland continued to be suggested as possible sources. One theory posited that they had arrived with ancient Greek tin traders, used as ballast in their ships. Perhaps they came from Brittany or Finland; British sources mooted included Dartmoor and Edinburgh. Then, in 1921, geologist Herbert Thomas established that Stonehenge’s bluestones had been quarried from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. But how did they get to Stonehenge? Were they transported by Neolithic people, or could they have been carried east by glaciers? Thomas had no doubt that humans were responsible, and most experts since have agreed. However, the glacier theory lingers, supported less by solid geological evidence than by disbelief that anyone would have travelled so far – 150 miles in a straight line – to source these megaliths some 5,000 years ago when they were quarried. Over the past few years, new lab technologies have enabled geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer to confirm that Pembrokeshire was indeed the main source of the bluestones. They have…

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