Art
This, again, is the art of the royal court. Nearly it speaks exclusively to the Maya elite and their world. This Maya art was made in perishable and nonperishable materials, while further serving to link the Maya to their ancestors. Although surviving Maya art accounts for only a small fraction of the art that the Maya produced, it covers a much wider range of subjects than does any other art tradition in the Americas. Maya art has many regional styles and is unique in the ancient Americas in bearing narrative text. The finest surviving Maya art dates to the Late Classic period.
The Maya preferred the color green or blue-green and had a single word for both the colors blue and green. In turn, they put a high value on apple-green jade and other greenstones, which they equated to the sun-god Kʼinich Ajau. They produced works such as fine tesserae and beads to carved heads weighing 4.42 kilograms or 9.7 lb.
The nobility of the Maya also practiced dental modification, while some lords wore encrusted jade in their teeth. Mosaic funerary masks could also be made from jade, as exemplified by the mask of the king of Palenque, Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal.
Maya stone sculpture emerged into the archaeological record as a fully developed tradition, suggesting it may have evolved from a tradition of sculpting wood. Because of the biodegradability of wood, the corpus of Maya woodwork has almost entirely disappeared. The few wooden artefacts that have survived include three-dimensional sculptures, and hieroglyphic panels.
Stone Maya stelae are found throughout city centres, and frequently with lower, rounded stones called in the literature altars. There were other forms of stone sculpture: limestone relief panels at Palenque and Piedras Negras and stone stairways decorated in sculpture at Yaxchilan, Dos Pilas, Copán, among others. The hieroglyphic stairway at Copán forms the longest surviving Maya hieroglyphic text and contains 2,200 individual glyphs.
The largest Maya sculptures were architectural façades created from stucco. The rough form was composed on a plain plaster base coating on the wall and the three-dimensional form is built up using small stones. Finally, this is coated with stucco and moulded into the finished form; human body forms were first modelled in stucco, and their costumes added afterwards. The final stucco sculpture was then brightly painted. Giant stucco masks decorated temple façades by the Late Preclassic, and such ornamentation continued into the Classic period.
The Maya have a long tradition of mural painting; rich polychrome murals have been uncovered at San Bartolo that date between 300 and 200 BC. Walls were covered with plaster, and then polychrome designs painted on the smooth finish. Most such murals have not survived, but Early Classic tombs painted in cream, red, and black have been uncovered at Caracol, RÃo Azul, and Tikal. Among the best-preserved murals are a full-size series of Late Classic paintings at Bonampak.
Flint, chert, and obsidian were all made for functional use in Maya culture; however, many of these objects were of exquisite finish in forms never intended for tool use. Eccentric flints are among the finest lithic artefacts created by the ancient Maya. They are technically demanding pieces that would have needed considerable skill from the maker’s part.
Large obsidian eccentrics reach more than 30 centimeters (12 in) in length. Their real form varies considerably, but they generally depict human, animal, and geometric forms associated with Maya religion. Eccentric flints show a great variety of forms, such as crescents, crosses, snakes, and scorpions. The largest and most elaborate examples display multiple human heads, with minor heads sometimes branching off from larger ones.
Maya textiles are very poorly represented in the archaeological record, although by comparison with other pre-Columbian cultures, such as the Aztecs and the Andean region, it is likely that they were high-value items. Scraps of textile have been recovered, but the best evidence for textile art is where they are represented in other media, such as painted murals or ceramics. Such secondary representations depict the elites of the Maya court bedecked in fine cloths-though cotton, as well as more luxuriant cloths-though of jaguar skins and deer hides.
Ceramics are the most commonly surviving type of Maya art. The Maya did not know about the potter’s wheel, and Maya vessels were built up by coiling rolled strips of clay into the desired form. Maya pottery was not glazed, although it often had a fine finish produced by burnishing. Maya ceramics were painted with clay slips blended with minerals and coloured clays. Ancient Maya firing techniques have not been duplicated.
An amount of very fine ceramic figurines have been excavated from Late Classic tombs on Jaina Island, in northern Yucatán. They range in height from 10 to 25 centimetres (3.9 to 9.8 in) tall and were hand modelled, with exquisite detail. The Ik-style polychrome ceramic corpus, containing finely painted plates and cylindrical vessels, originated in Late Classic Motul de San José.
It contains features like hieroglyphs painted in a pink or pale red colour and scenes with dancers in masks. Among the most distinctive features is the realistic representation of subjects as they were in life. The subject matter of the vessels includes courtly life from the Petén region in the 8th century AD, including diplomatic meetings, feasting, bloodletting, scenes of warriors, and the sacrifice of prisoners of war.
Bone, both human and animal, was also fashioned; human bones could well have been trophies, or relics of ancestors. The Maya prized Spondylus shells, worked them to remove the white exterior and spines to reveal the fine orange interior. By the 10th century AD, metallurgy arrived in Mesoamerica from South America, and the Maya took up small objects in gold, silver and copper. The Maya generally hammered sheet metal into objects such as beads, bells, and discs. In the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest, the Maya started using the lost-wax method to cast small pieces of metal.
One of the least studied forms of Maya folk art is graffiti. More graffiti, not designed as part of the scheme of decoration, was inscribed on the stucco of interior walls, floors, and benches of a wide range of structures, including temples, residences, and storerooms. Graffiti have been noted at 51 Maya sites, concentrated primarily in the Petén Basin and southern Campeche, and the Chenes region of northwestern Yucatán.
At Tikal, where a great quantity of graffiti has been recorded, the subject matter includes drawings of temples, people, deities, animals, banners, litters, and thrones. Graffiti was often inscribed haphazardly, with drawings overlapping each other, and display a mix of crude, untrained art, and examples by artists familiar with Classic-period artistic conventions.
Architecture
The Maya produced a vast array of structures, and have left an extensive architectural legacy. Maya architecture also incorporates various art forms and hieroglyphic texts. Masonry architecture built by the Maya evidences craft specialization in Maya society, centralised organization and the political means to mobilize a large workforce. The man-days that were used to build the construction of a large elite residence at Copán are estimated to be about 10,686; this compares to 67-man-days for a commoner’s hut.
Furthermore, it is estimated that 65% of labor used in the building of the noble residence was for quarrying, transporting, and finishing the stone that was used in the construction, while 24% of the labor was for the manufacture and application of limestone-based plaster. Altogether, it is thought that the construction of this house for a single noble at Copán might have consumed two to three months in labour by a core team of 80 to 130 full-time labourers.
A classic-period city like Tikal covered some 20 square kilometres (7.7 sq mi), of which an area of 6 square kilometres (2.3 sq mi) had been formed into an urban core. Such a city would require a massive amount of labor, running into many millions of man-days. The most massive structures ever erected by the Maya were built during the Preclassic period. Craft specialization would have required dedicated stonemasons and plasterers by the Late Preclassic, and would have required planners and architects.
Urban design
Maya cities were not formally planned, and were irregularly expanded with the addition of palaces, temples, and other buildings in a haphazard manner. Most Maya cities tend to grow outwards from the core, and upwards as new structures superimposed upon preceding architecture. Maya cities usually had a ceremonial and administrative center surrounded by an enormous irregular sprawl of residential complexes.
The centres of all Maya cities featured sacred precincts, sometimes separated from the nearby residential areas by walls. These precincts contained pyramid temples and other monumental architecture dedicated to elite activities, such as basal platforms that supported administrative or elite residential complexes.
Sculpted monuments were raised to record the deeds of the ruling dynasty. City centres also featured plazas, sacred ballcourts and buildings used for marketplaces and schools. Frequently causeways linked the centre to outlying areas of the city.
Some of these classes of architecture formed lesser groups in the outlying areas of the city, which served as sacred centres for non-royal lineages. The areas adjacent to these sacred compounds included residential complexes housing wealthy lineages. The largest and richest of these elite compounds sometimes possessed sculpture and art of craftsmanship equal to that of royal art.
The ceremonial centre was where the ruling elite resided, and where administrative functions of the city were conducted, together with religious ceremonies. It was also a place where the people in the city congregated for public activities.
The best land around the city centre was occupied by the elite residential complexes, whereas commoners had their residences dispersed further away from the ceremonial centre. Residential units were built on top of stone platforms to raise them above the level of the floodwaters during the rain season.
Building materials and methods
The Maya cities were constructed using Neolithic technology. Both perishable materials and from stone were used to build the Maya structures. Depending upon what was available in a local region, different types of stone could be used, which further differed in their style. For most parts of the Maya area, limestone was available in ready supply. When newly cut, the local limestone is quite soft, but sets with exposure.
There was great variation in the quality of limestone, with high-quality stone available in the Usumacinta region; in the northern Yucatán, the limestone used in construction was of relatively poor quality. Volcanic tuff was used at Copán, and nearby Quiriguá employed sandstone. In Comalcalco, where suitable stone was not available locally, fired bricks were employed.
Limestone was burned at high temperatures in order to manufacture cement, plaster, and stucco. Lime-based cement was utilized for the fixing of the stone works, and stony blocks were shaped from ropes-and-water abrasion along with obsidian cutting edge. The Maya made use of no practical wheel therefore all loads were on the litters, or by barges or moved upon logs. Heavey loads were hoisted upon ropes but likely not the help of pulleys.
Wood was employed for beams, and for lintels, even in masonry structures. Throughout Maya history, common huts and some temples continued being built from wooden poles and thatch. Adobe was also applied; this consisted of mud strengthened with straw and was applied as a coating over the woven-stick walls of huts, even after the development of masonry structures. In the southern Maya region, adobe was used in monumental architecture where locally available stone was not of a suitable quality.
Principal construction types
The great cities of the Maya civilization were made up of pyramid temples, palaces, ballcourts, sacbeob (causeways), patios and plazas. Some cities also featured large hydraulic systems or defensive walls. Most buildings had exteriors that were painted in one or multiple colors, or with imagery. Many buildings featured sculpture or painted stucco reliefs.
Palaces and acropoleis
These complexes were typically located in the site core, next to a major plaza. Maya palaces included a platform supporting a multiroom range structure. The term acropolis, in a Maya context, describes a complex of structures built on platforms of different heights. Palaces and acropoleis were essentially elite residential compounds.
They generally stretched horizontally as opposed to the towering Maya pyramids, and often had limited access. Some structures in Maya acropoleis supported roof combs. Rooms frequently included stone benches for sleeping, and holes show where curtains once hung.
Large palaces, such as at Palenque, could be equipped with a water supply, and sweat baths often occurred within the complex, or nearby. During the Early Classic, rulers were sometimes buried underneath the acropolis complex. Some rooms in palaces were actual throne rooms; in the royal palace of Palenque, there were several throne rooms where such important events as the installation of new kings took place.
Palaces are usually orientated around one or more courtyards, their façades facing inwards; some are decorated with sculpture. Some palaces carry attached hieroglyphic texts that classify them as the residences of the pharaohs of known reigning pharaohs. There is plenty of evidence to prove that palaces were far from just simple elite dwellings and that a wide array of courtly functions happened inside them, including audiences, formal receptions, and high ritual.
Pyramids and temples
Sometimes the temples are spoken of in hieroglyphic texts as kʼuh nah, ‘god’s house’. Temples were built on platforms; they were most often raised upon a pyramid. The earlier temples were probably thatched huts raised upon low platforms.
By the Late Preclassic period, their walls had become stone and stone roofs had replaced thatch on the implementation of the corbel arch. By the Classical period, temple roofs were surmounted by roof combs that raised the height of the temple and served as a base for monumental art. Temple shrines possessed one to three rooms, and were consecrated to major deities. Such a deity might be one of the patron gods of the city, or a deified ancestor. In general, freestanding pyramids were shrines to great ancestors.
E-Groups and observatories
The Maya were keen observers of the sun, stars, and planets. E-Groups were a particular arrangement of temples that were relatively common in the Maya region; they take their names from Group E at Uaxactun. They consisted of three small structures facing a fourth structure, and were used to mark the solstices and equinoxes.
The earliest examples date to the Preclassic period. The Lost World complex at Tikal started out as an E-Group built towards the end of the Middle Preclassic. Due to its nature, the basic layout of an E-Group was constant.
A structure was built on the west side of a plaza; it was usually a radial pyramid with stairways facing the cardinal directions. It faced east across the plaza to three small temples on the far side. From the west pyramid, the sun was seen to rise over these temples on the solstices and equinoxes. E-Groups were raised across the central and southern Maya area for over a millennium; not all were properly aligned as observatories, and their function may have been symbolic.
In addition to E-Groups, the Maya constructed other structures for monitoring the paths of celestial objects. The planet Venus, and various constellations, for example, aligned many of the Maya’s buildings. The Caracol, Chichen Itza is a circular multi-level edifice, with a conical superstructure. Slit windows marked the paths of Venus. At Copán, two stelae were erected to commemorate the location of the sunset on the equinoxes.
Triadic pyramids
Triadic pyramids appeared first in the Preclassic. A dominant structure was flanked by two inward-facing, smaller buildings, all mounted on a single basal platform. The largest known triadic pyramid was built at El Mirador in the Petén Basin; it covers an area six times that covered by Temple IV, the largest pyramid at Tikal. Three triadic structures lead out along ramped stairways from atop each central plaza.
No reliable predecessors of Triadic Groups are recognized, but triads may have been inspired by the eastern range edifice of E-Groups. Triadic configuration was an exemplary form of architectural design prevalent in the region of Petén during the Late Preclassic Period. Triadic pyramids from no fewer than 88 known archaeological sites survive today.
At Nakbe, there are at least a dozen examples of triadic complexes and the four largest structures in the city are triadic in nature. At El Mirador there are probably as many as 36 triadic structures. Examples of the triadic form are even known from Dzibilchaltun in the far north of the Yucatán Peninsula, and Qʼumarkaj in the Highlands of Guatemala.
The triadic pyramid remained a popular architectural form for centuries following the first examples; it endured into the Classic Period with later examples found at Uaxactun, Caracol, Seibal, Nakum, Tikal and Palenque. The Qʼumarkaj example is the sole one dated to the Postclassic Period. The triple-temple form of the triadic pyramid seems to be connected in some way to Maya mythology.
Ballcourts
The ballcourt is a distinct form of pan-Mesoamerican architecture. While most Maya ballcourts are Classic-period in date, the first instances were in northwestern Yucatán around 1000 BC, in the Middle Preclassic. When the Spanish reached Mesoamerica, ballcourts had not been in use since before the Spanish Conquest at cities such as Qʼumarkaj and Iximche in the Guatemalan Highlands.
The form of ballcourts across Maya history remained characteristically ɪ shaped, with a central playing area terminating in two transverse end zones. The length of the central playing area varied, typically between 20 and 30 metres (66 and 98 ft) in length, and had on either side two lateral structures up to 3 or 4 metres (9.8 or 13.1 ft) in height.
The lateral platforms frequently supported structures that may have held privileged spectators. The Great Ballcourt at Chichen Itza is the largest in Mesoamerica, measuring 83 metres (272 ft) long by 30 metres (98 ft) wide, with walls standing 8.2 metres (27 ft) high.
Regional architectural styles
Although Maya cities shared many common features, there was considerable variation in architectural style. The construction materials, climatic and topographical conditions, as well as preferences for each location, dictated such styles. In the Late Classic, these local differences were built into distinctive regional architectural styles.
Central Petén
The central Petén style of architecture is modelled after the great city of Tikal. The style is characterised by tall pyramids supporting a summit shrine adorned with a roof comb, and accessed by a single doorway. Additional features are the use of stela-altar pairings, and the decoration of architectural façades, lintels, and roof combs with relief sculptures of rulers and gods. One of the finest examples of Central Petén style architecture is Tikal Temple I. Examples of sites in the Central Petén style include Altun Ha, Calakmul, Holmul, Ixkun, Nakum, Naranjo, and Yaxhá.
Puuc
The exemplar of Puuc-style architecture is Uxmal. The style was developed in the Puuc Hills of northwestern Yucatán; by the Terminal Classic it spread beyond this core region across the northern Yucatán Peninsula. Puuc sites replaced rubble cores with lime cement, which led to stronger walls, and also strengthened their corbel arches; this allowed Puuc-style cities to build freestanding entrance archways.
The upper façades of buildings were decorated mosaic-fashion with precut stones, erected facing over the core to form elaborate compositions of long-nosed deities such as the rain god Chaac and the Principal Bird Deity. The motifs also included geometric patterns, lattices, and spools, possibly influenced by styles from highland Oaxaca, outside the Maya area. In contrast, the lower façades were left undecorated. Roof combs were relatively rare at Puuc sites.
Chenes
The Chenes style bears a very close resemblance to the Puuc style; however, it predates the use of the mosaic façades of the Puuc region. It provided fully ornamented façades on the upper and lower parts of buildings. There were also doorways ornamented by mosaic masks of various monsters depicting mountain or sky deities which indicated that entrance was given to the supernatural realms.
In some buildings interior staircases existed which linked different levels. The Chenes style is most commonly found in the southern part of the Yucatán Peninsula, but individual buildings in the style are found throughout the peninsula. Examples of Chenes sites include Dzibilnocac, Hochob, Santa Rosa Xtampak, and Tabasqueño.
RÃo Bec
The RÃo Bec style is a sub-region of the Chenes style and has many Central Petén elements, such as large roof combs. Its palaces are different from the others, for they lack interior rooms and have steep, almost vertical, stairways and false doors. These towers had deity masks, and they were built to impress the viewer rather than for practical purposes. These are pseudo-towers found only in the RÃo Bec area. Sites that belong to RÃo Bec include Chicanná, Hormiguero, and Xpuhil.
Usumacinta
The Usumacinta style developed in the hilly terrain of the Usumacinta drainage. Cities made use of the hillsides to support their major architecture, as at Palenque and Yaxchilan. Sites adapted corbel vaulting to enable thinner walls and multiple access doors to temples. As in Petén, roof combs decorated principal structures. Palaces had multiple entrances that utilized post-and-lintel entrances rather than corbel vaulting. Many sites erected stelae, but Palenque instead developed finely sculpted panelling to decorate its buildings.
Language
Before 2000 BC, the Maya spoke a single language, which linguists have dubbed proto-Mayan. Linguistic analysis of reconstructed Proto-Mayan vocabulary tends to suggest that the ancestral Proto-Mayan homeland must have been in the western or northern Guatemalan Highlands, although the evidence is not conclusive.
From the Preclassic period forward, Proto-Mayan evolved into the major Mayan language groups that make up the family, including Huastecan, Greater Kʼicheʼan, Greater Qʼanjobalan, Mamean, Tzʼeltalan-Chʼolan, and Yucatecan. These groups branched out further in the pre-Columbian period to form over 30 languages that survived into modern times.
The language of almost all Classic Maya texts throughout the entire Maya area has been identified as Chʼolan; Late Preclassic text from Kaminaljuyu, in the highlands, also appears to be in, or related to, Chʼolan. The use of Chʼolan as the language of Maya text does not necessarily indicate it was the language commonly used by the local populace-it may have been equivalent to Medieval Latin as a ritual or prestige language.
Classic Chʼolan may have been the prestige language of the Classic Maya elite, used in inter-polity communication such as diplomacy and trade. By the Postclassic period, Yucatec was also being written in Maya codices alongside Chʼolan.
Continue in the next part.
