Track 4 / Presentation 4

Vaulting Technique in Ancient Maya Architecture

Laura Gilabert Sansalvador

PhD Architect

Postdoctoral fellow at University Politècnica de València (Spain)

Visiting Scholar at Tulane University

laugisan@upv.es

In the period of their greatest splendor and for more than ten centuries, the ancient Maya used the stone masonry vault as the roofing system for most of the temples and palaces in the core of the cities. Vaulted buildings are not only found in these monumental centers, but also in small scattered residential groups, which reflects the wealth and status of their inhabitants in contrast to those of buildings of perishable materials.

The vault system used by the ancient Maya is based on the structural principle of corbeling, which consists of placing stones projecting above one another. The main advantage of this building technique is that it admits un¬cut stones. Nevertheless, it requires thick walls and achieves limited spans. While the Maya initially used this system, they eventually developed stonecutting techniques and a wide range of formal and constructive varieties of vaults. There are substantial differences in the quarrying and construction techniques used in each region, which in many cases have determined the architecture stylistic features.

In order to study this ancient building technique, data from over 50 archaeological sites in the Maya Lowlands were recorded, creating an online open Maya Vault Catalogue (https://doi.org/10.34780/2z2o-f062). The sample was then analyzed from an architectural perspective, paying particular attention to the constructive and stereotomical features of the vaults. From the results, it can be affirmed that the devel¬opment of the vaulting technique in Maya architecture followed a path of specialization and standardization of the stonemasonry technique, aimed for covering wider spaces and improving the shape and flatness of the inside surfaces. The analysis of the regional variants of the vault, together with the chronological development of the stonemasonry technique in each geographical area, suggests that building knowledge may have been transferred across regions in specific time periods.

From the data collected in the field, the most frequent deterioration pro¬cesses were examined, considering both intrinsic and extrinsic factors to the building system, as well as the various forms of collapse of the vaulted structures. This analysis indicated that in most cases, the deterioration processes that affect vaulted buildings depend directly on the constructive and stereotomical features of the vaults, which shows the crucial importance that investigating Maya architecture from a constructive perspective has for the preservation of this cultural heritage.

After the so-called “collapse” of the Maya civilization, many ancient cities were abandoned and remain hidden in the jungle. Airborne Lidar surveys are revealing many more buildings than previously thought in a highly anthropized landscape. This is permitting to significantly progress in the study of settlement patterns of ancient societies, to know the extent of landscape transformations, and to go much further in the study of ancient demography. In addition, it makes a big difference in planning archaeological excavations and optimizing research resources. As the quality of the images improves, it is also possible to reach the architectural scale, not only identifying buildings but also characterizing them, determining their architectural typology and even their construction system.

This presentation shows the main results of this research about the vault in Maya architecture, focusing on the main regional variants of the building technique and their development over time, and presents an ongoing study on the characterization of ancient buildings from remote sensing images.

Laura Gilabert Sansalvador holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and a Master in Heritage Conservation. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), she focuses on the study of ancient Maya construction techniques and the documentation of architectural heritage through digital technologies. Laura is conducting a postdoctoral project at the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University (New Orleans, US) with the aim to characterize Maya architecture through Lidar images.