Maya Palaces and Elite Residences: An Interdisciplinary Approach (review)

What is a palace? Who lives there? And how can you tell? These are questions addressed in this volume's eleven chapters. The nineteen field archaeologists and three art historians, all within the Mayanist field, who attempt to answer them employ varying degrees of anthropological theory, and virtually all of them depend on the same few archaeological and ethnohistoric sources for their definitions and analogies. The archaeological sites presented differ from each other in environment, topography, size, forms of elite architecture, and especially in the kind of information available for functional and historical analysis. Such information derives principally from excavation, and from local hieroglyphic inscriptions when available.

About ten Maya sites are discussed in detail, and although the history of half of them is well known from inscriptions, the focus in this book is on the form and function of palaces. Their historical occupants are, however, the topic of another book, Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, which involves three of the same authors as Maya Palaces.¹ In Royal Courts, the lives and roles of the elite that lived in the palaces are reconstructed using hieroglyphic inscriptions, and scenes of court life painted on the large corpus of Maya polychrome ceramics, in addition to excavation data.

All of the authors in Maya Palaces address the difficulties of defining palace. In his chapter on two elite structures at Yaxuna, Yucatan, James Ambrosino simplifies the classic definition, which describes multi-room masonry buildings on low platforms, by emphasizing their visual effect as "structures ... organized according to horizontal rather than vertical dimensions" (253-254). Such a definition serves to distinguish elite residential buildings from single-room temples, which tend to be raised on a pyramidal substructure. In this volume, broader, more functional definitions emerge; palaces, if understood to house the principal ruler, are found to differ architecturally from other elite residences in scale and complexity of layout.

Thomas Guderjan et al., in describing Blue Creek, Belize, a site without monuments or inscriptions, adopt a typology based on the relationship between courtyards and associated structures that provides categories of increasing complexity, and restriction of access to internal spaces. Such data, when compared with critical criteria like topography, scale, and proximity to the site center, allow for conclusions about which buildings may have been palaces at different historical periods. The most useful definition based on this typology describes a palace as acompound with multiple structures and courtyards that housed the extended family and workers attached to an operative ruling lineage.

Loa Traxler discusses Early Classic Copan, Honduras, and E. Wyllys Andrews V et al. present a Late Classic Copan example; both emphasize the dynastic significance of such complexes with grand vaulted buildings, platforms, and associated courtyards, which, as living spaces of ruling households, were distinguished by proximity to the principal lineage shrines at the center of Copan.

Harrison's work in the Central Acropolis of Tikal, Guatemala, in the southern lowlands, more than thirty years ago, was the first analysis of a huge elite residential complex to incorporate excavations and material remains with consideration of the possible roles of the inhabitants and uses of its rooms.² In this volume, Harrison describes the Central Acropolis as the royal palace in terms of Maya kingship that was validated by descent from divine ancestors, and demonstrated by the presence of "thrones" and of "liveried" courtiers in proximity to the principal lineage temples.

The site of Dos Pilas, Peten, built on hilly limestone terrain with a system of caves beneath, inspires Arthur Demarest et al., to discuss the "sacred geography" that determined the location of a royal palace on an eminence with an accessible cavern below. Although the structures were far from grand, this unique location—with its lineage temples, throne and "presentation" rooms—identified it to his satisfaction.

Jeff Kowalski describes the Governor's Palace at Uxmal, Yucatan, in the northern lowlands, as the palace of the final ruler, and as a council house. Council houses are known...