Controlling Access, Channeling Water: Fortification and Hydraulic Architecture at Muralla de León

Summary

This is an abstract from the "For Conquest or Defense? the Fortresses and Fortified Centers of Mesoamerica" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fortification is almost necessarily monumental in scale in order to be effective, requiring substantial modification to the built environment according to a coherent overall plan. Such landscape alterations tend to impact natural hydrological flows, and indeed many instances of fortification in the Maya world were designed with hydraulic implications in mind. Hydrology appears to have been a fundamental consideration in the design of the fortifications at Muralla de León, constructed in stages over centuries. This presentation considers the interplay of hydraulic and defensive architecture in this setting, assessing their relative significance and by extension the settlement patterns and function of the site through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• For Conquest or Defense? the Fortresses and Fortified Centers of Mesoamerica

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51441