Artifacts dug up near Main Plaza

Workers renovating Main Plaza have unearthed an old trench that might have protected Mexican troops from Texian rebels in the winter of 1835, a few months before the Battle of the Alamo.

If archaeologists are right, the discovery is a fortification built 172 years ago by soldiers under the command of Mexican Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cós, whose surrender to the Texians on Dec. 9, 1835, set the stage for Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna's siege of the Alamo.

"Amazingly, just totally amazingly, we're pretty sure we've got about a 6-foot-wide section of that thing that's intact," said Mark Denton, an archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission.