The Maya (Ninth edition) by Michael D. Coe

Author:Michael D. Coe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780500772805
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2015-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

112 Plan of central Uxmal, by far the largest Puuc site.

113 The Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal, looking northeast.

A causeway, or sakbih, 11.25 miles (18 km) long runs southeast from Uxmal through the small site of Nohpat to Kabah, so presumably the three centers were connected at least ceremonially if not politically. Kabah is noted for its Kotz’ Po’op palace, with an extraordinary facade made up of hundreds of Flower Mountain masks, and for its freestanding arch. Sayil, a city to the south of Kabah, is dominated by a magnificent three-story palace. It has the additional distinction of being one of the few Puuc sites to be completely and intensively mapped; Jeremy Sabloff of the Santa Fe Institute, who headed the project, estimates that c. 10,000 people lived in an urban core of 1.7 sq. miles (4.5 sq. km), with an additional 7,000 in the zone surrounding this core. To the east of Sayil is Labna, another sizable Puuc city, with an elaborate freestanding arch (far more impressive than Kabah’s) [114], a palace group, and a lofty temple-pyramid. Other cities with a far richer inventory of texts are Oxkintok and Xcalumkin, the former with its own distinct lordly epithet, the latter with an unusual emphasis on a title, sajal, used solely by secondary lords in cities along the Usumacinta and in Chiapas.

Edzna is the southernmost of the Puuc sites, and is best known for its unusual five-storied structure which combines features of pyramids and palaces [115]. Presumably its Late Preclassic canal-and-moat system, described in Chapter 2, remained in use throughout the Terminal Classic. Whatever its function, the Puuc sites represent one of the great architectural legacies of the ancient New World, with many buildings of highest finish and masonry of almost unparalleled quality, all in unusual state of preservation. Yet they differ from cities to the south, frustratingly so, by their more limited texts, leaving us in the dark about much of their elite history.

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