An Archaeologist Made a ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ Discovery at the Alamo. Then It Happened Again.

Popular Mechanics ^ | Tim Newcomb

[nickcarraway]

Buried side by side since 1836, one Mexican and one Texan cannonball lay untouched beneath the Alamo’s soil for nearly two centuries.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

-Archaeologists excavating near the church at the Alamo have discovered two cannonballs fired during the famous 1836 battle there.

-The cannonballs sat close to each other for roughly 190 years before being discovered.

-One cannonball was from Mexico and the other was made with iron from Texas.

Two fully intact Battle of the Alamo-era cannonballs have sat undisturbed in the dirt outside the northeast corner of the Alamo Church, likely since the infamous 1836 siege. Recently discovered sitting only a few feet away from each other, they offer a distillation of the battle itself. One cannonball is bronze and comes from the Mexican Army, while the other was made of iron by the Texans trapped inside the Alamo.

“The first one we found, I thought, there’s no way in the world we just found a cannonball from 190 years ago,” Kolby Lanham, the Alamo’s senior researcher and historian, said in a statement. “And then fast forward just a couple of months, and we found a second one. It’s just a huge kind of once-in-a-lifetime deal—but obviously it’s happened twice.”

The first find came on March 5, a day before the 190th anniversary of the climax of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, a 13-day siege during the Texas Revolution. The battle, in what is now downtown San Antonio, killed 180 Texan rebels, including Davy Crockett, who were fighting for Texan independence from Mexico. Made from solid bronze, the first cannonball found by archaeologists was likely from the Mexican Army. Then came the June 2 discovery in the next plot over, a cannonball made of iron that experts believe came from the Texans. The second discovery was a bit larger, and experts believe it was shot from a cannon made for six-pound cannonballs.

“It’s a huge deal. I don’t think you can undersell it,” Tiffany Lindley, the Alamo’s director of archaeology, said in a video provided by the Alamo Trust. “We have a lot of fragments of shrapnel, but a solid shot, we haven’t found that before, and this is the second one.”

Lindley said that after finding the first cannonball, they thought there was no way they could top it. “That’s it, the [excavation] project is made, let’s pack it up and be done,” she joked. “Then we found another one.”

Lindley was offsite the day of the second find, and an archaeologist simply sent her a bomb emoji—and she knew she should head back. The same archaeologist found both cannonballs adjacent to each other at approximately the same depth at the northeast corner of the Alamo’s church, which was founded as a Spanish mission and reconstructed in 1755. The cannonballs were in a “clean context,” meaning there weren’t any modern intrusions in the immediate environment around their resting spots.

“What that tells us is that they were in likely their original deposition,” Lindley said. “So whenever they were dropped the very first time—possibly in 1836, probably—they haven’t been touched since. And that’s what makes them extra special. Not only do we have a really amazing artifact, we know the story behind it.”

Teams have continually found artifacts across the site’s entire timeline, Lindley said, from pre-Alamo occupation through the mission era, the 1800s battles, and into its industrial history. Now, with both cannonballs in hand, the Alamo’s archaeology team plans to bring in experts to fully analyze their size, materials, and origins.

[Revel]

Poorly written article. I am reading along just fine and the when I get here:

““The first one we found, I thought, there’s no way in the world we just found a cannonball from 190 years ago,” Kolby Lanham, the Alamo’s senior researcher and historian, said in a statement. “And then fast forward just a couple of months, and we found a second one. It’s just a huge kind of once-in-a-lifetime deal—but obviously it’s happened twice.” “

Then I confused. Which ones were Texan and with ones were Mexican? Did they find 2 the first time. And then two again. Or did they find one and then the other. Or some other combo. Very poor writing.

[21twelve]

I think they found two, with the Texan one found later.

I wonder why they were so close to each other? How did cannonballs explode? Or were these solid balls? I wonder if a Texan picked up a Mexican cannonball and thought perhaps it could be used in his cannon? Or a Mexican dropped his after they had taken over the Alamo.

[packrat35]

I recently purchased an 1812 silver dollar. Just the history of it excited me.