All along the Watchtower: A Spatial Analysis of the Defensive Network of Coastal Towers in Early Modern Sicily

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sicily holds a strategic position between the eastern and western Mediterranean. Fortified coastal towers have served as a component of coastal defenses since the establishment of the earliest Greek colonies on the island. During the Late Medieval period (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries), fortified coastal towers took on an intensified role as the Spanish defended the island as part of their effort to establish a western Mediterranean hegemony. At the onset of the Early Modern Era (sixteenth–nineteenth centuries), the frequency and function of these towers transformed concomitant to sociopolitical stabilization and improved modes of communication. This poster explores the temporal and spatial distribution of the fortified coastal towers from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries along two different Sicilian coastlines; one between the cities of Palermo and Trapani in the west, and the other between Catania and Siracusa in the east. Drawing from data derived from historic maps, satellite imagery, and ground truthing, a sample of more than 85% of the towers built or used during the Early Modern Era were plotted into a GIS environment. Viewshed and least-cost-path analyses were used to compare and contextualize strategies for communication and defense in relation to a rapidly changing social order.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52732