One day before the 190th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo, an archaeologist sprinted across a dig site in San Antonio, Texas.
Kolby Lanham, senior researcher and historian at the Alamo, had just been told what was sitting in an excavation unit near the northeast corner of the church. “That’s a literal artifact from the Battle of the Alamo and you’re holding it for the first time since the battle happened,” he said in an episode of the Alamo’s podcast, Stories Bigger than Texas, released on March 19.
What the team pulled from roughly 3 feet (0.9 meters) below the surface was a complete, intact 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) bronze cannonball — almost certainly fired by the Mexican army during the siege or assault of March 1836.
The distinction matters. According to Lanham, Texan defenders at the Alamo preferred iron cannonballs. Bronze was the Mexican army’s material. “I would say with a fair amount of certainty that this is a Mexican army cannonball and it was likely fired at the Battle of the Alamo or could have been during the 12-day siege,” he said. That siege, commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna, ended on March 6, 1836, when Mexican troops overran the mission and killed all of its roughly 180 defenders — among them William Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett.
What Else the Ground Gave Up
The intact ball was not alone. Archaeologists also recovered four cannonball fragments outside the church. At least one of those fragments is likely from the battle itself, according to Tiffany Lindley, the Alamo’s director of archaeology, who announced the finds in the same podcast. The fragments came from hollow balls, Lanham said — the kind fired from a short-barreled cannon called a howitzer. His team is now working to reassemble them.
Lindley’s reaction to the intact cannonball was direct. “We found a complete cannonball,” she said. “I don’t think words can express the feelings that we all felt.”
The Alamo’s Longer Story
Built in 1718 as a Spanish mission and fortress, the Alamo became the site of one of the most documented confrontations of the Texas Revolution, when Anglo-American settlers sought to break from the Republic of Mexico. The battle itself lasted 12 days before the final assault. In the months that followed, Texan soldiers invoked its memory as a rallying call — “Remember the Alamo” — during later engagements that eventually secured independence.
Archaeological work at the site is continuous. Researchers have been recovering new artifacts and historical data in ongoing digs, with each find capable of reframing what is known about the conflict and the people involved.
“That artifact waited 190 years to be pulled out of the ground,” Lanham said. “Things like that change the Alamo’s story.”
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