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2 Public Architecture, Ritual, and Temporal Dynamics In this chapter I summarize the public architecture and related residences in Blue Creek’s core area in order to document the temporal dynamics of power and politics as expressed by its builders.1 The“core area”of a Maya site is the public,“downtown ” sector or the central precinct with large, open public plazas flanked by large buildings that functioned as religious and administrative edifices. Expressions of religion,power,and authority were incorporated into the architecture of the public sector. The images of rulers, their lives, and their accomplishments were displayed on monolithic stelae.However,most stelae were not carved.Instead,they were probably plastered and painted, leaving us with little or no specific information today. Maya monumental architecture can be seen as a symbolic, physical representation of Maya religion, specifically their understanding of creation. The Maya view of the cosmos reflects elements of the creation story told in the Popul Vuh. The creators, Xpiyakok and Xmukane, had already made and destroyed the world three times before the present and fourth creation. The creation was made possible“with the utterance of a word and the appearance of the thing embodied by the word.”2 During the third creation, the Lords of the Underworld killed the uncle and father of the Hero Twins. The men had angered the Xibalbans by playing the ballgame too loudly. So, the Xibalbans killed them and buried them under the ballcourt and hung the father’s decapitated head on a tree. The skull then magically impregnated the daughter of one of the Lords.She sought refuge in the world of people and gave birth to the twins,Hunahpu and Xblanke.They eventually went to Xibalba and defeated the murderer of their father and resurrected their father and uncle. When the creators began again with the fourth creation, they knew that corn and water would make up humanity but did not know where to find corn. They heard of a place full of food named the“Witz Mountain”or“First-True-Mountain” or “Split-Mountain,” which rose from the “Primordial Sea.” The maize there was molded into the first four humans and the water became their blood. Almost everything in Maya life is linked to this creation story and symbolic re- creations of the Maya cosmos. Freidel, Schele, and Parker have demonstrated that Classic Maya public architecture is, in fact, a reenactment of the landscape of creation . Maya temples are the symbolic Witz Mountain rising from the plazas, which themselves are symbolically the primordial sea. Further, Kent Reilly has shown that this arrangement dates to the origins of complex society in Mesoamerica. The Olmecs at La Venta originated this symbolic re-creation by making the Witz Mountain a volcano and “painting the Primordial Sea green” with large serpentine mosaics .3 Mathews and Garber correctly point out that these motifs, particularly the quadripartite directional symbolism, exist at a multiplicity of scales and are seen on single small artifacts as well as at the macro level in site planning.4 The plans of public sectors were built on consistent principles that related to the Maya views of directionality and religion.Ashmore has shown that directional symbolism is inherent in these plans.5 Elaborating on our understanding of such site planning, Houk has shown a continuity of plans in the eastern edge of the Petén.6 Such similarity among public sectors reflects their regional sociopolitical integration . For example, there is a similarity between the Blue Creek site plan and that of Nohmul farther downstream along the Río Hondo as well as with those of several sites along the Bravo Escarpment. If this is an expression of sociopolitical integration , as Houk argued, it is especially interesting that these sites (except Nohmul) follow the Bravo Escarpment, which Ralph Roys saw as dividing the territories of Yucatecan and Chol speakers in colonial times.7 One of the most overlooked aspects of Maya public architecture is in some ways the most obvious—the plazas themselves. These were multifunctional public places where religious, administrative, and civic activities occurred. Plazas were used for markets and trade fairs, much like the system that still remains in Oaxaca today and much like the system partially seen in most Middle American towns today . Clearly plazas were controlled by the ruling elite, who in some manner bene- fited by their sponsorship. Casual visitors as well as archaeologists often overlook the energy required to build these...

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