The Form and Function of Lineage: Council Houses in Epiclassic Mesoamerica

Summary

The council house (popol nah or nim ja in Maya languages) is found from North Mexico to southern Mesoamerica. With roots in Classic-period architecture and enduring until after the Conquest in some regions, the council house typically was located in central areas of civic-ceremonial centers and featured a rectangular colonnade and built-in benches. In situ glyphs and ethnohistory indicate that lineages used these buildings for ritual-administrative purposes, and perhaps also as dwellings. This paper analyzes the proliferation of the council house during the Epiclassic period and queries whether it can be considered diagnostic of Epiclassic architecture, and how its consistent form came to be spread over a wide geographic area.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reconsidering the "Epic" in the Mesoamerican Epiclassic Period Part 2: Interregional Interactions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage