Mesoamerican Architecture

Mesoamerican architecture refers to residential and community structures erected by cultures who lived in a broad geographic area spanning from modern Mexico through Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. The region’s diverse ecosystems gave rise to a number of sophisticated civilizations, of which the best known are the Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec. The individual identities of these cultural groups share some traits that can be found in the material culture of their built environment. Nevertheless, the built forms and materials used reveal regional identities, which arose in response to not only cultural and political needs and desires, but also environmental and technological limitations and opportunities.

Background

Architectural forms of the Mesoamerican cultural zones share many features linked both by form and cosmological meaning. While residential architecture is difficult to identify in the earliest phases of Mesoamerican history, they are often placed on raised platforms (to prevent flooding) or clustered near ceremonial centers (e.g., the Olmec site of San Lorenzo or at Teotihuacán). More easily identifiable are public structures such as large plazas framed by raised platforms or pyramid structures. The combined underground spaces, the artificial mountains that are the pyramid structures, and the temples set above form a cosmological vertical link (axis mundi) between the underworld, terrestrial plane, and the heavens above. Thus, the pyramidal form/artificial mountain often served as either a communal focus or as a burial marker because of its link to the primordial source of all power (the watery underworld) and the heavens.

Ball courts (and the ball games played therein) are perhaps the most discussed structure of the Mesoamerican world. Consisting of two long, parallel mounds with a shared space between, these structures not only served as the venue for ceremonial ball games, but also operated as multifunction spaces at which people could gather. The general shape of the ball court was similar to the cleft opening associated with the Maize god and with the mythological opening to the underworld.

In the Maya world, the public architecture of the great city-states was not occupied year round, but did require clear and direct access. Raised causeways (sacbe, pl. -beob) were laid out to connect one principal city-state to the next. The sacbeob not only facilitated intercity communication, but also helped maintain visual links to often tenuous political alliances.

Although less conspicuous architecturally, the natural underground pools (cenotes) of the Maya world were prominent features of the Maya lowlands. They helped provide access to fresh water and strengthened ties between the urban centers and immediate landscape.

The rich architectural forms of the Mesoamerican world drew from a narrow range of materials, primarily waddle-and-daub set on stone foundations for residential units. Rubble construction was more common for raised platforms and the cores of pyramidal structures. These were then stuccoed and often covered in figural decoration and/or hieroglyphic texts, such as the impressive hieroglyphic staircase at Copan. In the Mayan Lowlands, limestone was common and allowed the surface of the architectural forms to be covered in rich geometric and figural scenes.

Overview

Building traditions in the Mesoamerican world begin early during the formative, or pre-classical, period (c. 2000 BCE–200 CE), when public ceremonial spaces, raised platforms, and pyramid structures appear, as well as perhaps the first ball courts. At the Olmec site of San Lorenzo (in Veracruz, Mexico), a central palatial structure with artificial water features, a ball court, and raised platforms suggests a developed stratified social organization—a necessary element to marshal large labor forces. Even more impressive is the Olmec ceremonial center of La Venta (also in Veracruz, Mexico) whose urban limits are marked by the presence of colossal portrait heads. In the ceremonial center, large-scale stones (megaliths) were used to frame the ceremonial space (Complex C) at the foot of an artificial mountain.

City-states in the Mayan highland begin to produce massive pyramidal structures late in the formative period. These artificial mountains at sites like Nakbe or El Mirador (in Mexico and Guatemala, respectively) use the massive size of their pyramids as statements of dominance over their satellite states. On the other hand, at sites like Kaminaljuyu in Guatemala, the architecture draws inspiration from the forms at Teotihuacán. At both sites one finds pyramids with a series of stack platforms whose outer edge consists of a lower sloping edge and a vertical frieze. Called talud-and-tablero architecture, it is a hallmark of Teotihuacano architecture.

The classical period (c. 200–900 CE) marks the boom in architecture in central Mexico (at Teotihuacán), western Mexico (at Monte Alban), and in the Mayan highlands (especially at Tikal, Copan, Palenque) and lowlands (Rio Bec, Chicanna, and Uxmal). The rise of these great city-states led to interregional exchanges of ideas, most prominently seen by the increased impact of central Mexican architectural elements from Teotihuacán on contemporary Mayan architecture, especially at Tikal. In this period, architecture also fuses with sculptural iconographic systems, both as symbolic images and hieroglyphics, to embellish existing architectural forms.

While the highland centers continue to refine and embellish architectural forms already in the Mesoamerican repertoire, the Maya lowlands reconfigure the exterior appearance of their buildings. The architectural styles that emerge in the seventh century CE are hybrids of northern and southern styles. The site of Rio Bec gives its name to a style that consists of temple-pyramids with nonfunctional towers on its ends and which are solid masses, filled with rubble and embellished with false features (e.g., doorways, stairs) to give the suggestion of an early classical temple. Further north in the lowlands, the Chennes style emerges as a decorative approach to the surface of buildings. At sites like Chicanna, the facades of buildings are emphasized with mosaic-like decoration. It is likely that the softer limestone so abundant to the region is exploited for this purpose. Finally, the great center of Uxmal is exemplary for the Puuc style, named for the Puuc (hill) region of Mexico where this style emerged. Puuc architecture features mosaic facades (like the Chicanna style) over a rubble core, columns framing doorways or entire stretches of the façade, and hook-nosed deities on panels across the upper portions of the façade.

By the end of the classical period, however, a collapse occurred—whether by overpopulation, food shortage, water shortage, warfare, or some combination, is unclear—of the great Mayan centers, and major construction at those sites ceased. During this postclassical period (c. 900–1519 CE), the greatest development is seen in the northern lowlands of the Mayan zone (at Chichen Itza and later Mayapan) and at the Aztec principal city of Tenochtitlán on the eve of the Spanish conquest. Most of the architectural forms of the Maya world remained the same, but quickly began to falter in terms of quality, scale, and embellishment. The well-preserved form of Chichen Itza belies the stagnant approach to architecture seen at Mayapan.

The culmination of Mesoamerican architectural forms (plazas and pyramids) as well as other architectural forms exploited by the Aztecs was the Aztec principal city of Tenochtitlán. Skull racks (tzompantli) set in public spaces, while not new, become a prominent feature in the Aztec capital. Since Tenochtitlán was built on marshy land, the Aztecs exploited this natural feature to build up the land between a series of canals not only for building, but also for agriculture (chinampas). A curious feature of Aztec architecture is the reburial of artifacts taken from the sites of Tula and Teotihuacán as links between the new Aztec empire and the perceived original empire of Teotihuacán—a city viewed as a place of origins (tollan).

Bibliography

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Christie, Jessica Joyce, and Patricia Joan Sarro, eds. Palace and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006. Print.

Fash, William L., and Leonardo López Luján, eds. The Art of Urbanism: How Mesoamerican Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Architecture and Imagery. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2009. Print.

Nichols, Deborah L., and Christopher A. Pool, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.

Parmington, Alexander. Space and Sculpture in the Classic Maya City. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.

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Tsukamoto, Kenichiro, and Takeshi Inomata, eds. Mesoamerican Plazas. Arenas of Community and Power. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2014. Print.

Uriarte, María Teresa, ed. Pre-Columbian Architecture in Mesoamerica. New York: Abbeville, 2010. Print.