MAYAN ARCHITECTURE
PAGE 2
It cannot be asumed that stone buildings existed in the primitive formative stage of Uaxactun, but, at the end of the period low stone walls begin to appear. The low stone walls, that have been found to be related to some ancient Chicanel pots, were simple holding structures for low duration materials.
Nonetheless, at the end of the period, the first stone construction of large dimensions is found; a piramid built to hold a hay and wood structure.
The oldest example of Mayan stone architecture is the stucco covered piramid, E-VII-sub, of Uaxactun. The notable state of preservation that it is in is due to the fact that little after it was finished, it was covered compleately by another stone piramid, E-VII.
The sides of this construction were also decorated with great stucco masks, as the oldest E-VII-sub. The top of the first piramid was so small that it is clearly seen that it could have never held a stone building, as neither did E-VII-sub, since on the lime floor of the top of E-VII-sub, four refilled pole holes were found, that without a doubt originally served to hold the corner poles of a stick and hay structure.
This stucco piramid, decorated with sixteen heroic size stucco masks, with four sets of steps, is a marvell of the primitive Mayan architecture. Even though it was built with mud, it is only a substructure and belongs to an era prior to stone buildings.
With the Tzakol stone and ceramic wake complex introduced to Uaxactun in 8.14.0.0.0(317), we find the oldest example of a sticking-out stone dome roofing of the Mayan territory.
Perhaps by 8.12.0.0.0(278) the first domes had been built. The oldest examples of these are very rough. They are composed of ordinary stone slabs and with no proportions, placed on a thick layer of mortar and they have a very uneven surface.
After its introduction to Uaxactun, the dome roof begun to spread in all directions. It got to Copan in the extreme southeast, maybe by 9.0.0.0.0(435); to Oxkintok in the northwest of Yucatán surely since 9.2.0.0.0(475); to Tulum in the northeast of Yucatan, by 9.6.10.0.0(564); and probably to the Usumacinta valley by 9.10.0.0.0(633), or before.
Before the end of the Classic Era, in 10.3.0.0.0(899), dome roofing had penetrated everywhere in the Mayan territory, but strangely it did not pass the Mayan area and cannot be found in any of the immediately neighbouring regions.
Its most western appearance occurred in Comalcalco, in the State of Tabasco, and furthest to the southeast, in Papalgualpa and Asuncion Mita, in the southeast of Guatemala. It is not found at all in the high lands of this country, except on the roofs of a few disperse graves, which is probably due to the intense sismic activity of this last region.
Besides the dome roofs, another type of roof is known in Mayan architecture, the flat one, made of beams and lime concrete. It has been found in the Classic Era in Piedras Negras, Uaxactun and Tzimin Kax, and in the Postclassic Era in Chichen Itza and in relatively recent places along the oriental Yucatan shoreline, mainly in Tulum and in Chac Mool.
The lime concrete roof was built on top of crossed beams filling the empty spaces with sticks, and on the beams a lime concrete roof, 30 or more centimeters thick, was placed. When the lime concrete roof had dried firmly, the beams were retired. This method is still used in Yucatán.
When an excavation is made it is difficult to identify these roofs because they crumble turning into small stones and lime dust.
Nonetheless, when mud buildings are excavated and no stone domes are found, it can be strongly assumed that such constructions had flat beam and lime concrete roofs.
Practically all Mayan buildings were erected on substructures that varied in height according to the use the structure on top was given, from the low terraces of 50 cms to 2 meters high, and when instead of terraces they were palaces and inhabitable buildings, elevations of up to 45 meters in the case of the temples (Temple IV of Tikal).
One climbed these substructures by wide and steep sets of steps, built on one or more sides. The buildings were erected by the back side of the top, so that an ample space was left between its front and the sets of steps that gave access to them; but by the back and the sides they reached almost to the edge of the substructure.
Usually, Mayan facades are horizontaly divided in two main fringes, by a medium mold that runs without interruption around the building, more or less from the middle and up on the wall.
Another similar mold runs around the high part of the building. The roofs are made from lime hard concrete and are flat, generally a little higher on the middle to facilitate the running of water. In Copan, Chichen Itza and Uxmal some "sticking out" drainage outlets can be seen.
Frecuently it can be found on top of the roof, paralell to the front of the building and on its central axis, a tall wall that runs all through the construction. This part of the roof is sometimes as tall as the building itself and it has no other use than to decorate.
The superficial plans vary according to the use the buildings were given. Temples, generally have only two chambers, one behind the other, to wich one enters by a door opened on the front wall; the interior chamber was the sanctuary and the exterior chanber was used for less reserved ceremonies. In the palace type of construction, there is almost always two long files of chambers, one behing the other.
If there are only exterior doors on the front wall, one enters to the interior chambers by the doors opened on the back wall, but sometimes one can directly enter to the back chambers file by the doors opened on the back wall of the building.
In this case it is rare to find doors along the long central wall that separates the two files and almost never are there any on the transversal separating walls.
These last observations are specially aplied to the north region palaces, but in Piedras Negras, in the central region, doors on the middle and transversal walls are not rare. Actual windows do not exist, though sometimes the upper middle of the facade is perforated by very small rectangular openings.
Even though the Mayas may have cut and polished the stone blocks individually for their buildings, the exterior as well as the interior walls were originally covered with lime stucco, covering with it all joinings. But specially the Yucatán buildings no effort was made to recarve the joinings.
In the small towns and villages in the north of Yucatán, the lime ovens are still made in the same way as in the ancient times, and the limestone is still burnt to fabricate lime.
A spot is chosen in the forest and is compleately cleaned. Immediately bundles of wood logs are cut and are placed in a circle that varies between three and six meters in diameter. The bundles are placed parallel to the radius of the circle, leaving in the middle a hole of about 30 centimeters in diameter.
The pile of wood rises about 1.25 meters, and then, begining from 30 centimeters back from the exterior edge the broken pieces of limestone are piled until another 60 centimeters high.
Once this operation is finished, the oven is lit by throwing rotten leaves and wood to the bottom of the center hole and lighting them up. This way the fire extends from the bottom up and from the inside to the outside of the oven.
The Mayas believe that it is important to take two precautions to obtain a good burn: there has to be no wind, so that the oven burns evenly, and women must not be allowed to get close to the place. If a woman touches the oven the burn will be a failure.
36 Hours are needed for an oven to burn compleately and when a good burn has been achieved , the stone fragments are reduced to lime. During the one thousand two hundred years the Mayas were making stone buildings, diferences in the architecture occured, not only in a temporarly manner, but also in the shape of regional variants, that reflect in the diferent types of piece joining, in construction details and decoration styles.
Nonetheless, considering the long space of time that their constructing activities took and the extense area where these flourished, Mayan architecture is notably homogeneus.
It does not seem that the buildings of the Ancient Period of the Classic Era, may have been profoundly decorated. By general rule the facades were vertical with molds on the middle and on the upper part; these last ones were made by lines of rock that came out from the wall and then received a morter layer finish.
Some buildings of the Classic Era in the central region, specially in Copan, Palenque and Tikal, have sloped facades above the middle mold level. Later the upper parts of the facade that are between the middle and upper molds, begun to be moderatly decorated with stucco.
This type of facade decoration reached its most notable development during the Classic Era (340) in Palenque, when the high zone as well as the inferior one, were being beautifully decorated with complicated drawings in lime stucco that was held by ordinary stones that came out of the facade.
In the central region there does not seem to have been much decoration of carved stone in the upper part of the facade, except in Copan and Quirigua. Occasionally sculpture was used in the exterior decoration; in board murals (Piedras Negras), or in ramps along the stairs (Palenque, Copan, Quirigua) and on the front of the grades, which are engraved sometimes with hieroglyphic inscriptions (Copan, Quirigua, Palenque, Yaxchilan, Naranjo, Seibal, Etzna, La Amelia).
The use of sculpture as a way of decoration of the interiors in the Classic Era buildings is not common either. It can be observed on the sanctuary boards of Palenque, on the jambs and on the sides of the interior doors of Copan and in front of the interior grades and mural decorations of Quirigua.
In the north region, though, sculptural decoration is used more. In the region of the Chenes, in the center of Campeche and west of Quintana Roo, facades are decorated with rich decorations, not only on top but below the middle mold aswell. These Chenes facades, are the most decorated and complicated of the Maya territory. In the Puuc area, north and northwest of the Chenes region, the nost fertile section andmost densly populated of the Classic Era, the sculpture is confined to the upper areas of the facades even though a lower area is also found sculpted.
The drawings here are in their most part geometrical, though in ocasions human, animal, bird or serpent on the upper half of the facades.
The individual elements of these mosaics are better formed, engraved, and adjusted in the Puuc region that in any other part. Architecture reached here heights it had never climbed. On the other hand, sculpture, that had developed with such and exquisite taste in the central region, weakened as an independent art in the north region, being left subordinated to architecture and limited almost absolutely to the decoration of facades.
The sculpting art sufered the consequences of this limitation. While architecture in Puuc reached a higher level of beauty and dignity, the few sculptures that exist are in its most part heavy, clumsy and even rough.
Mayan-Mexican architecture is an even more recent architectural phase, that reached its highest expresion in Chichen Itza. The "serpiente enplumada", feathered serpent is predominant, Kukulcan or the Quetzalcoatl of México, in who's honor the main temples were erected.
Its figure is reproduced on columns and walls. Its buildings are characterized by their sloped bases; its ornamented roofs with stones.
Some structures are clearly of Mexican origin, such as the Tzompantli or placo of the skulls. The Tzompantli of Chichen Itzá is a platform uncovered from 56 meters of lenght, 12 of with and 1.80 of height, and its sides are decorated with sculpted representations of skulls inserted on poles.
The Chichen Itzá buildings, as well as the substructures, are decorated with man or animal figures, making less use of the purely geometrical elements that are abundant in the Puuc architecture.
On the main entrances of the temples heroic size human statues can be seen. Lastly, Mayan-Mexican architecture is characterized by the frecuent use of large colonnades. Sometimes they measure 60 to 100 meters long and contain four or five iles of roofed arches, and on their back walls, benched surounded thrones can be seen. Architecture has turned less heavy and at the same time more open, light and gracious.
