Quantifying Defensiveness: Lidar and the Volumetrics of Maya Fortresses

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.

Volumetrics have long been a part of the spatial analysis of Maya architecture. They have been used as a tool to estimate the effort invested in construction of various human-made features, from pyramids to houses. Volumetric calculations are also employed in the study of material extraction, such as quarrying, and for quantifying resource collection and redirection for features like reservoirs and canals. Through the application of GIS and the acquisition of high-resolution lidar data, scholars have significantly increased the accuracy of volumetric calculations. Here we demonstrate the value of lidar-based volumetrics to quantify the energy and resources involved in constructing defensive fortifications. This study uses La Cuernavilla, Petén, Guatemala, as a case study—an ancient Maya fortress discovered with lidar that presents numerous defensive features of varying types. Using geospatial methods and Python packages like GeoPandas and Matplotlib, we calculated and analyzed the volume of La Cuernavilla’s defenses and looked at their spatial distribution to make inferences about ancient Maya military engineering. These methods offer a quantitative foundation for understanding the significance of Maya defensive architecture by providing a concrete example of how volumetrics and geospatial analyses can provide insights into the cost and strategies employed in defending a polity.

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): 51485