ABSTRACT
The defense strategies of Andean societies are specific to different geographic sectors, ecologies, societies and cultural periods and represent integrated programs that different societies developed to protect large investments in agricultural fields and urban water supply systems. For each of the major categories, defense and preservation strategies to protect from excessive rainfall, floods, mass wasting erosion/deposition events and drought exist along with performance and efficiency improvement strategies to increase agricultural yields under more stable and predictable weather patterns. A listing of defensive strategies follows; each category describes a hydraulic engineering application, examples of site use locations and the time frame occurrence in which events occur. The measures give indication as to concern of ancient societies to protect their agricultural systems to degree that their technology and innovative resources permitted. In total, ancient Peruvian and Bolivian water systems appear to reflect many hydraulic and hydrological technologies brought about from years of innovation and nature observation that rival modern civil engineering practice.
