From Texas Public Radio:
Next month will mark the 208th anniversary of the Battle of Medina. The Battle of 1813, one of the largest and bloodiest battles in Texas, but little is known, adding the actual location. TPR reported earlier this year that storyteller Brandon Seale led an effort to locate the location, which would now be in northern Atascosa County, near the bexar county boundary. Seale’s efforts were detected through an organization called the American Veterans Archaeological Recovery Project, or AVAR. Stephen Humphreys is the executive director of Avar. Humphreys coined the term “rehabilitation archaeology”. His organization uses army veterans along with professional archaeologists.
“Rehabilitation archaeology is an archaeology that aims to gain advantages for participants,” Humprheys said.
Many AVAR volunteers are veterans with disabilities, however, the Humphreys program uses its unique functions to assist with archaeological excavations.
“Many veterans have disability scores,” he continues, “but what we need to do is not delineate them through disability. So one of the amazing things about archaeology is that we allow and exercise them to serve as an endorsement of their full potential, no matter how much va score they have. And yes, many of them have that. We’re passing to let them pass there and become the most productive we can recover, doing something amazing and unique.
AVAR carried out several primary projects, recovering World War II aircraft in Europe and the United States, working on several battlefields and ancient excavations, the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, an American victory that marked a turning point in the Revolutionary War.
“We were the first project, with, of course, the National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust to move to this site and the solution of the knowledge we were able to gain. It’s just amazing to be able to show where the war the lines were, what tactics were used in this war. It’s been pretty mind-blowing,” Humphreys said.
Humphreys learned of Brandon Seale’s search to locate the battle of Medina while searching the Internet.
Seale describes the surroundings of the battle:
“He trained an army of Anglo-American Texan and Native American volunteers opposed to the strength of the Spanish Empire. Thus, in 1813, Mexico was going through its War of Independence. But it was a kind of nadir, a low moment in this combat. And for the maximum component, the only position where combat was continuing at the time was in Texas. And so San Antonio in componenticular, and this component of Texas is where the flames of independence and the flames of revolution were still burning. On August 8, 1813, about one thousand nine hundred regular Spaniards clashed with some one thousand nine hundred to one thousand four hundred of those volunteers, and it ends catastrophically for the supporters of Mexican independence. At most, they were all killed, so it also becomes a formative occasion in fact, in terms of how Texons think about their position within the broader allocation of the Mexican nation. in fact, formative occasion to outline his participation in the occasions of the Texas Revolution of 1835-36”.
Humphreys felt it would be better to have compatibility for the AVAR mission.
“It’s a desirable story,” he said. Not found This is a domain where I need to paint, either because I’m also a Texan, and because it’s a domain where I think there are a lot of veterans who would be interested in these types of paintings.
What if they can’t locate the genuine combat site?
“So I think it would possibly be a little more complicated than some of our other assignments,” Humphreys said. “Because you never want to send an assignment team to the checkout and they can’t locate anything. But I think that’s what Archaeology is meant to do. We are meant to answer questions that other people are interested in and other people care where the Battle of Medina took place. after the season until we do.
AVAR’s archaeological excavations in search of the Battle of Medina are expected to begin in February 2022. On Friday, August 13, the Historical Commission of Atascosa organizes a symposium and discussion on the Battle of Medina. The public is invited. You can learn more about AVAR, Brandon Seale and the Battle of Medina in TPR. org.
If the above report was helpful to you, make a donation here. Your donation will pay for everything you find on texasstandard. org and Texas Public Radio. Thank you for making a donation today.
© 2021 Texas Standard. A from the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin | Contact us