Thirteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

On the tropical plains of Yucatán, Mexico lie the temples, palaces, and residences of one of the most influential Precolumbian Maya cities. Known as Mayapán, the city was once a powerful center and one of the most important Indigenous polities in the Americas during the Postclassic Period between 1220 and 1440CE. Postclassic urban landscapes, and the knowledge systems that gave rise to them, are of considerable importance to dialogs in art history and anthropology— especially as the Postclassic represents the last time the Maya would be self-governed before the Spanish incursion in the 15th and 16th centuries. This study addresses how these frameworks were active within a major stucco frieze from Mayapán’s central pyramid, referred to as the Castillo. Specifically, I argue that the Castillo frieze materialized agency-rich energies associated with the struggle between life and death. In visual form, these energies were manifested in the Castillo frieze’s detailed imagery (paralleled in the Maya codices—a connection crucial to this talk), powerful materiality, and centrally planned location. Providing a place for these primordial energies to be, to continue to become, and to involve their viewers as part of a sacred, social nexus were the purposes of the frieze. As art historian W.J.T. Mitchell might say, these were the things “the picture wanted.” Alive in that centrally located place, such energies were anchored to, and possessed by, the very city itself—a testament to Mayapán’s own religious and political agency in a quickly changing world.