Evidence for other buildings in the area is seen in Unit B, where two strata of broken wall plaster were found, one being deposited directly onto the general occupation debris on the dark brown basal clay surface at 36 inches below the present surface (see Figure 7). Traces of several other buildings remain to be found within the two courtyards of the Alamo, and future work will help to modify or correct the hypothetical sequence proposed. The artifact collection from these levels, albeit limited, is typical of residential structures. The collection shows no strong Indian characteristics; that is, the few artifacts found in these strata are predominantly glazed ceramics. The artifact collection, there-fore, does not (yet) contradict our hypothetical dates and usages of this area.
In general, two things are now quite clear: 1) there is a great deal more to the history of the earliest days of Mission San Antonio de Valero than has been written, which comes as no surprise; and 2) a large amount of additional historical research needs to be done. The most important result of this excavation is a painful awareness of how little we know of those first years at the mission. The excavations have revealed a greater need for in-depth research on the records of these years. Until this is accomplished will we be unable to clearly understand the few fragments of buildings we have found.
The Battle of the Alamo
The Skull and the Straight Trench
Throughout the majority of the Phase I excavations, we were unable to identify any features as being contemporary with the Battle of the Alamo. Random military hardware was found, but we were unable to specify any particular stratum as dating to ca. 1835-1836. In fact, the dating implies there was no 1835-1836 stratum, but rather a sequence of deposits beginning in the early 1700s and continuing until about 1800, at which point the artifact dates generally jump to at least the mid-1800s. The break seemed to occur at the base of the bed of tan clay and cobblestones in Unit D, but in Units A and B the situation was not as clear. Numerous disturbances encountered throughout the Phase I excavations seemed to produce mixed dates. The difficulty was so pronounced that we reached a point where we were uncertain as to just how much of the archaeological record we were seeing was disturbance; the feeling grew that perhaps the great majority was.
The completion of Unit D and the recognition that it was taken up predominantly by the southern portion of some large ditch-like disturbance feature (Figure 5), in which we had found a skull with possible evidence of death by violence, prompted us to cut the additional narrow trench from Unit D to Unit B to obtain a clear view of the cross section of this ditch-like feature. Once this was accomplished, the true nature of the ditch-like disturbance became very obvious.
It was indeed a trench, excavated into the series of apparently undisturbed strata from some higher ground surface, which had since been removed, cutting off the top of the trench and its associated lenses of fill at some unknown distance below their tops. The trench ran parallel to the present line of the 1926 wall along Houston Street and showed distinct signs of having been intentionally refilled with rubble and earth. The surviving depth of the trench was about 2.75 ft. The fill consisted of a large quantity of limestone rocks, some over 18 inches long, thrown down onto the smooth floor of the ditch, followed by masses of dark brown clay loam. In the upper portion of this brown loam among the last stones, but still quite clearly within this deposit, the skull was found.