Tula 2014: Reexamining Ball Court 2 through Cross-Cultural Comparisons with the Yucatan

Summary

The Proyecto de Investigación, Conservación y Mantenimiento para la Zona Arqueológica de Tula 2014, directed by Dr. Robert Cobean focused on the restoration of Ball Court 2. Today, the three major ceremonial centers exposed at Tula are the Palacio Quemado, Pyramid B and Pyramid C; these structures form an L-shape that faces the Adoratorio situated in the center of the plaza. The positioning and architectural dimensions of Ball Court 2 in Tula’s main precinct are almost exact with the largest Ball Court at Chichen Itza. Ball Court 2 served as a ritual and political centerpiece at Tula Grande; a second and smaller Ball Court at Tula has numerous associations with the rain god Tlaloc, while the religious components of Ball Court 2 are less understood. This colossal structure contains an I-shaped playing surface surrounded by staggered palatial chambers for the Toltec elite. The summer 2014 excavations reopened the work of Eduardo Matos Moctezuma at this Ball Court forty years prior, after a small team of graduate students from Zacatecas and the United States focused on repairing its eastern façade. The following presentation utilizes the summer 2014 Tula project to illustrate the ritual identity of Ball Court 2 in greater detail.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage