Mission San Antonio De Valero - Sixty-Nine Years Of Flexibility In Architectural Layout

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Mission San Antonio de Valero and the Alamo – A Construction History from Mission to Military Fortress, Texas, United States", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 1724 the Franciscan Friars moved the mission from its second site to its final location on the east bank of the San Antonio River. Several temporary structures were erected early on, but their conversion to permanent facilities lagged. Even after the compound layout was finalized twenty years later, the internal subdivision and use of space continued to change, as did the size of the mission compound. This paper reviews these changes in site structure and examines the factors that lead to this flexible architectural layout. Recent revaluation of the mission inspection records and extensive excavations at the site suggest that the absence of a Master Mason, quarried building stone, and trained indigenous labor, coupled with labor demands associated with the construction of mission infrastructure, fluctuating population, and relationships with mounted indigenous groups conditioned the ever-changing mission layout.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mission San Antonio de Valero and the Alamo – A Construction History from Mission to Military Fortress, Texas, United States   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow