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Post by Rich Curilla on Jul 5, 2007 19:06:41 GMT -5
Something that has always confused me about this plat of the excavated palisade trench in relation to the Alamo church is the angle. I do not have a protractor handy, but I assure you that my eye does not deceive me. The angle south from a line parallel with the axis of the church in this plat is far shallower than the angle of a line from the true S.W. corner of the church to the southeast corner of the low barrack. If the angle on the archeological plat is correct, then the trench (hence the palisade) did not end up at the southeast corner of the low barrack, but rather farther north along the south wall of the low barrack and/or kitchen. This, of course, flies in the face of the Giraud survey plat as well as the OTHER archeological plats of the south end of the compound, showing the palisade location. What gives? I would think that it would be desirable to have it *set in* from the corner ten or fifteen feet. That would allow riflemen atop the low barrack to cover the outside of the palisade.
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Post by TRK on Jul 5, 2007 20:38:19 GMT -5
Interesting observation, Rich. I do have a protractor, and the angle of the two ditches with reference to the facade of the Alamo church is about 110 degrees. That is also the angle cited in Figure 11 of Eaton's 1980 report, as published (this figure is not in the online version of the report). If you transpose that angle from the southwest corner of the church on the plats of Giraud and Everett, and assuming that the palisade was roughly in a straight line, it would come to a point well north of the southeast corner of the Low Barracks.
However, the Sanchez-Navarro and Labastida maps both show the palisade as meeting the Low Barracks at their southeast corner, not north of it.
Eaton's 1977 excavations only extended about ten feet out from the facade of the Alamo, which is less than 10 percent of the length of the palisade. Yet, Eaton extrapolated the course of the palisade from that relatively small sample area. Perhaps the line of the palisade didn't run true, and at the same angle from the church facade, for its entire length.
Anne Fox made archaeological investigations of the area around the main gate of the Low Barracks in 1988 and 1989, and her team excavated an area some fifty feet long just to the east of the site of the eastern wall of the Low Barracks. I don't have that report, but it might contain information on the where the western terminus of the palisade was.
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Post by marklemon on Jul 5, 2007 21:27:18 GMT -5
This passage from jake Ivey's manuscript may shed some light on this oddity: "Jack Eaton found two trenches running parallel to each other towards the southwest from the southwest corner of the church, where the Mexican sources locate this stockade. In his report, Eaton indicated that the angle followed by these trenches was 110 degrees west of magnetic north, which was N9.5degrees E at the time of the excavations (as it happens, this is also the angle of the facade of the church). The Giraud survey information, however, indicates that the true angle of the ditch was S62.32degreesW, or an angle of 127.18degrees west of the facade of the church. All of us who worked on the ditch could look down the ditch straight to the place where the southeast corner of the Low barracks would have been, so it appears that Eaton made some sort of error in his recording of this angle. I suspect that he made his best reading of the angle of the trench using a compass, and got his reading of about 129degrees, about 1.7 degrees off the actual angle; not bad for a hand-held compass, a church facade with various blocky pilasters, and an irregular trench line. He then corrected this reading for magnetic deviation, 9.5 degrees, which would again be from magnetic north. But instead of adding the correction back to the true north reading, he subtracted it again, giving him the angle of about 110 degrees he recorded on the plan in his report." So it seems that Eaton's diagram was drawn from faulty information caused by a simple error...."the Devil is in the details."
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Post by stuart on Jul 6, 2007 6:05:38 GMT -5
Mark, I’m fully in agreement with your reasoning on the construction of the stockade. I just remain bothered by Jake Ivey’s clear and positive statement concerning the discovery that external row of post molds.
There’s no mention of any in that on-line version of Eaton’s excavation report and in fact as I read both it and the plan, there was only a very short stretch of southern ditch identified, which would preclude the discovery of a row of post molds in the first place. It all seems quite at odds with Ivey’s description and I wonder if he’s referring to some other set of excavations entirely.
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Post by marklemon on Jul 6, 2007 15:42:25 GMT -5
The southern trench area that was excavated was indeed short, but was certainly long enough to havce expoased at least one or two bracing postholes that would have existed had the barrier been anything but a vertically placed row of palisades. I think that, in light of the fact that horizontally placed logs are seen almost exclusively as butressing elements in military engineering, we may safely put this hypothesis to rest. I cannot speak for Jake of his sources, but if I had to guess, knowing him and his methods as I do, I'd say that the irregulary spaced outer posts are what he calls "informed opinion" and not strictly based on any data that I have seen.
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Post by Jake on Dec 29, 2007 11:23:54 GMT -5
Wow, you guys really take this stuff apart. Let me clarify several things for you. 1. The U-shaped, 9-inch wide ditch had post-molds visible here and there in it -- we could see the posts were set in vertically. 2. The row of posts outside this trench to the south were also visible post-molds, of what appeared to be split posts -- that is, they were round on one side and flat on the other. They were either driven into the ground, or set into individual holes we couldn't see. They were just about against the south face of the U-shaped ditch with its line of posts. 3. The impression we had was that the posts in the U-shaped ditch were set so that at intervals there was a two-inch gap between these bigs posts, and the split southern posts were set to cover these gaps on their south side. 4. Jack believed firmly in the six-foot-wide palisade with two rows of posts and earth fill between, in spite of my pointing out to him the evidence in the ground, and he elected to write the report so as to support that view (you can imagine what it must have been like for him to have to put up with a smart-ass like me, not even a paid excavator on that one). In other words, he left out all the information about the posts and split posts in the south row, and the lack of any post-molds in the northern, two-foot-wide ditch. There was a lot of battle trash in this ditch, by the way, as though it was open at the time of the battle. 5. Jack's field notes and unit plans are not in the CAR archives. He apparently did not turn them in to be filed. So I can't get a copy of my plan drawings of my units looking at the ditch and the posts in front of it. I would have to draw a reconstruction, as best I remembered it.
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Post by Jake on Dec 29, 2007 11:29:02 GMT -5
One cool thing about the Mahan book is that the illustrations were drawn by J. E. Blake, who some of you will recognized as the guy who drew a plan and a perspective view of the Alamo in the 1840s.
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