Stonework of the Maya

University of New Mexico Press [Published 1974]. Soft cover, 119 pp. 1974 Reprint. [Excerpt from preface by author] In early 1970, I photographed at a number of archaeological sites in southern Mexico… [M]y aim was to visit a number of pre-Hispanic sites in order to gain a broader perspective on the different traditions of stonework throughout ancient America. My main concern was to return to a long-range photographic exploration of the landscape and stonework of the Incas, in southern Peru. Nevertheless, my experience at Palenque and other Maya sites awakened a strong personal desire to photograph much more extensively throughout the Maya lowlands. … [M]y intention has not been to provide scientific documentation of the architecture and sculpture or to present only the most important or best-known monuments. Rather, I have photographed the architecture and sculpture as part of the natural setting in which they stand today. In this sense, Stonework of the Maya is a study of the interdependence of the cultural and natural landscapes of the ancient Maya. Each of the sites represented in this study is characterized by a distinct and unique sense of place as well as by strong individual traditions. The stonework of the architecture and sculpture is the most enduring expression of these traditions, and by nature it is both specific and metaphoric, both a world unto itself and an elusive echo of the past. Archaeological research continually provides us with critical new insights into various aspects of this stonework. The monumental sculpture, for example, has increasingly been shown to record and depict actual personal histories of the Maya elite as well as to bear cyclical calendrical inscriptions. Many major architectural structures have been excavated and reconstructed so that we now have a very immediate, literal vision of how some of the great ceremonial centers once appeared during the Classic 1, roughly A.D. 250-900.