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Abstract Late Postclassic lowland Maya civic-ceremonial masonry architecture appears in two main configurations—temple assemblages and basic ceremonial groups—first identified at Mayapan. Around the Peten lakes, these two architectural complexes have been tied to northern immigrant Kowojs and Itzas, respectively, and their distributions map the varying control over the lakes by these two ethnopolities. Temple assemblages exhibit considerable variation in their structural components and arrangements throughout the lowlands, but they have not been studied comparatively. Here, we examine 14 temple assemblages at 12 lowland sites. We consider one of the two assemblages at Zacpeten (Sak Peten), Group A, to have been built by Kowojs, who asserted their identity and earlier (Late/Terminal Classic) ties to the site by reusing carved monuments. “Blended” assemblage Group C is more difficult to parse, but reflects cosmo-calendrical principles of statecraft and the builders’ and users’ broader ties to Mayapan and Topoxte.
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The pre‐contact temple system of Hālawa Valley, Moloka‘i, Hawaiian Islands
ABSTRACT Building upon a pioneering 1909 survey of Moloka‘i Islandheiau(temples) by archaeologist John F. G. Stokes, the pre‐contact temple system of Hālawa Valley is described and analysed. Tenheiauwere relocated and mapped, with seven sites test excavated and radiocarbon dated. The majority of sites are terraces or terraced platforms in architectural form, ranging in size from 72 to 1300 square meters in basal area. Functionally, the temples include fishing shrines (ko‘a), agricultural or fertility temples (heiau ho‘oulu‘ai), and oneluakinior temple of human sacrifice dedicated to the war god Kū. The orientations of the temple foundations appear to be deliberate (rather than dictated by topography). One group is slightly offset from cardinality and shows an eastward orientation, likely associated with the god Kāne. A second group exhibits an orientation to the ENE, which is the direction of the star cluster Makali‘i (Pleiades), whose achronycal rising determined the onset of the Makahiki season dedicated to the god Lono. The radiocarbon dates indicate that the temples were constructed during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, or the Archaic States Period of the Hawaiian cultural sequence.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1939790
- PAR ID:
- 10502627
- Publisher / Repository:
- Archaeology in Oceania
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Archaeology in Oceania
- Volume:
- 59
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0728-4896
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 68 to 90
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- monumental architecture, Polynesian religion, ritual sites, Polynesian archaeology, archaeoastronomy
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.5309
