The wall enclosed an area of approximately 200 acres, surrounding the central mounds, the Grand Plaza, and the elite residential areas that made up the city’s core.

It separated this inner zone from the outer residential areas where most of the city’s population lived.

The wall was rebuilt at least four times.

Each rebuilding required the harvesting of new timber, the digging of new post trenches, and the setting of new posts — a major construction project in its own right.

The fact that it was repeatedly reconstructed rather than simply maintained and repaired suggests that the wall experienced damage significant enough to require replacement, or that the original construction was intended to be temporary and periodic replacement was planned from the beginning.

What did the palisade protect?