Statue of Alfred the Great at Wantage. Photo credit: DJ Clayworth.

News from England is that archaeologists think they’ve found a piece of Alfred the Great… or his son.

Preliminary tests suggest that a pelvic bone found in a museum box is either Alfred, or his son, King Edward the Elder. The bone was among remains excavated some 15 years ago at an abbey in Winchester, England, but they were never tested. Instead they were stored in a box at Winchester Museum until archeologists recently came across them.

“The bone is likely to be one of them, I wouldn’t like to say which one,” Kate Tucker, a researcher in human osteology from the University of Winchester told Reuters. Researchers say that, given the historical record, bones that old could only have come from Alfred or his family.

I hope they find more, especially the skull. Can’t get enough of those forensic reconstructions.

In the absence of a skull, the only way to find out what Alfred looked like would be to clone him. And I don’t think anybody over there really wants that. The first thing he’d want to do would be to drive all the foreigners out. Beginning with the Normans.

Come to think of it, I’m going to have an extraneous piece of hip bone available myself in a couple weeks. I wonder if there’s any market for it as a relic. Invest now, before I’m canonized.