Digging Back in Time

Twenty-five years ago, engineers tried to block rising damp by pushing a corrosion-resistant alloy plate called a Monel plate through the Alamo Church's foundations. Current excavations are assessing how well the plate is working, and because archaeologists had to dig six feet to investigate it, they also uncovered soils undisturbed for more than two centuries. Those excavations revealed brightly painted ceramics from the Alamo's earliest years, when it was a Spanish religious settlement called Mission San Antonio de Valero, including Puebla Polychrome fragments found during 2019 excavations, one of the oldest types of Mexican-made ceramics archaeologists find at the Alamo.

San Antonio, Texas · United States