Halls of Power: A 3D Reconstruction and Spatial Analysis of a Possible Maya Council House

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Open halls were part of the political theatre of Maya political landscapes in the Classic and Postclassic periods. These centrally located buildings were often built on top of long raised limestone platforms and were thought to have been used as council houses or as gathering or ritual places for the elites or leaders. But how transparent were these political meetings and practices conducted in these large buildings and what are the implications of such visible accessibility of political organization at this time? This poster presents the results of a digital 3D model created from topographic data of a recently excavated Terminal Classic open hall at the Maya site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala. Created in Sketchup and analyzed in GIS and other spatial analysis software, the 3D architectural model provides a more phenomenological understanding of the relation between those meeting or gathering inside the public structure and between these individuals and ‘bystanders’ who may have been standing in the public plaza below. These relationships are also examined through view shed analyses, which explore the inter-visibility of participants. These spatial analyses provide a deeper understanding of the visibility afforded by Maya public architecture and by extension, the political practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 54069