“OLMEC FRAME”: Sacred Surveying of Mesoamerican Volcanos, Pyramid
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DRAFT 2/16/19 DESIGNING THE “OLMEC FRAME”: sacred surveying of Mesoamerican volcanos, pyramid shaped landscape domains, major site locations, hearth maps and positioning of site features and their orientations Abstract This work rests on the assumption that prehistoric Mesoamerican societies had the technical ability to accurately survey lines across great distances of landscape. To begin to imagine what symbolic formalized patterns, possibly used ritually, might have been created, two approaches are followed, neither of which has precedence in the field of archaeology. First is “design simulation” where the architect as researcher begins with a roughly chronological list of important early Mesoamerican sites, both natural and built, as points in the landscape. The challenge is to design large scale, geometrically “systematic” patterns that connect them in a kind of evolving “Olmec Frame”. Second, using custom software, it is possible to make “probability” tests comparing numbers of the simplest of geometric patterns among existing sites, here three-point alignments, with numbers created by replacement random points in test areas of the landscape. The simulation discovers the possibility that if one records the azimuths used to locate sites in the larger landscape, this list becomes a means of discovering patterns of site design that include “pyramid landscape” and “hearth” shapes. Patterns associated with sky maps are considered as well. For a designer, the simulation process in Mesoamerica is itself compelling but does not constitute archaeological proof that any element of the frame was actually an artifact. Two results of the probability tests, however, clearly point to a strong likelihood that some large-scale patterns were not random. One involves three-point alignments of distant sites to Tikal’s Temple IV point, and the other, very surprisingly, shows that points connected by the “frame” as a system are unusually robust in creating numbers of alignments with other non-frame (Mayan) sites that dramatically exceed the random. Dennis Doxtater College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture University of Arizona 1 0.1 Introduction 0.1.1 “Orientating Bonamak” 0.1.2 Strategy of this work: design simulation and testing probabilities of alignments 1. Simulating Frame Design in the Mesoamerican Landscape 1.1 Coincidental geometric patterns among most prominent mountains and alignments with the sun 13 1.1.1 Cerro Gordo: “north” / “above” 1.1.2 Lake Atitlán: “south”/ “below” 1.1.3 Atitlán X and the great diagonal, a coincidental connection between North/Above and South/Below 1.2 Cultural extensions of coincidental natural frame elements 26 1.2.1 The Lake Atitlán landscape and Bassey-Sweet’s ideas of Mayan Hearth 1.2.2. Chocolá’s integration with the Toliman center point and San Pedro 1.2.3 Izapa: linking Tacana-Tajamulco with Atitlán and Atitlán X 1.2.4 La Venta as first defined landscape domain of an Olmec frame: a larger scale coincidental equinox base line and related meridian 1.2.5 San Lorenzo as meridian apex: a second great coincidental diagonal and new medio point 1.3 Revision of La Venta frame via unifying Atitlán Medio: homologues of pyramid and hearth landscapes/maps as urban design 46 1.3.1 Unification of the two great diagonals: La Venta, Piedras Negras, (and Monte Alban?) 1.3.2 Palenque’s site positioning and hearth identites with Piedras Negras 1.4 The coincidental alignment of El Chiflón cascades with La Venta and Atitlán X: hearth homologues at El Mirador and Tikal 63 1.4.1 La Danta / El Mirador and the site prominence of an evolved Mayan Hearth 1.4.2 Tikal’s Emulation of the Atitlán X Meridian and Addition of a New Hearth 1.5 Copán as southern hearth: linkage to Atitlán X, Tikal and Calakmul 83 1.5.1 Copán’s location as unifier of the great diagonals 1.5.2 An Extreme of Hearth Map Expression 1.5.3 Do stela/altar locations associate with azimuth patterns? 1.5.4 Calakmul as northern terminus of the Olmec Frame: alignment with Tikal and Copán 1.5.5 Calakmul’s great pyramid as hearth waterfalls? 1.6 The Architecturalization of Teotihuacan: its offspring and the absence of Mayan hearth maps 110 1.6.1 Origins of Teotihuacan’s orientation 1.6.2 Takalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu as base vertex points for a landscape pyramid domain with Atitlán X as apex 1.7 Azimuths as calendar and relation to sky maps 121 1.7.1 How were Olmec Frame elements recorded? 1.7.2 Sky maps and time 1.7.3 Temple 22’s integration with the Copán hearth grid 2 2. Probability Exercises 2.1 Analysis of three-point alignments among 50 early Mayan sites 138 2.1.1 Background and Site selection 2.1.2 Comparing three-point alignments among existing sites with random sets 2.1.3 Using Doyle’s Middle Pre-Classic E-Group sites to test alignments 2.1.4 Alignments with Tikal and San Bartolo as focii 2.2 Testing points on the “Olmec Frame” against the first group of Mayan locations 160 2.2.1 Four categories of existing points: natural features, major sites, benchmarks and other early sites tested against random points 2.2.2 Adding tentative alignments from probability testing to the Olmec Frame record 3. Conclusive proof of large-scale surveying and a new vein of archaeological knowledge? 170 3.1 First test of simple alignments among early Mayan sites 3.2 A designer’s view of the Olmec frame 3.3 Design simulation provides an unexpected probability proof 3.4 Yaxchilan & Bonampak 3.5 The late Classic development of antagonistic Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan territories in context with Altar de Sacrificios 4. Final words 193 4.1 Chaco and Mesoamerica 4.2 Other meridians in the frame simulation 4.3 Ideas of “landscape pyramid” as first organizers of larger scale cultures 4.4 Summarizing hearth patterns and foci of Mayan sites: Bassie-Sweet’s idea expanded 4.5 Implications of social organization 4.6 What to do with this manuscript? 3 0.1 Introduction To an architect academically unfamiliar with the huge archaeological record of Mayan sites, the geometry of built form at these places is nonetheless immediately intriguing. On the one hand the complexity of design at city scales involving several hundred meters overwhelms and firmly resists any immediate intuition of unified planning. Yet within pyramids or other such obviously religious features, the evidence of carefully designed combinations of elements is unquestionable. So, from a design perspective, if the Mayans had the technical ability to formalize complex geometry of structures in plan, section and elevation--some of which individually are over a hundred meters in size--why didn’t they apply similar, formalizing design processes to the urban site as a whole? Does the answer lie in research concluding that these sites began and grew incrementally—perhaps as modest villages--without any master plan to guide the placement of successive ceremonial foci? Is the location of non-ceremonial first occupation in the larger landscape therefore incidental to the later development of sacred city? The author, an architect/social anthropologist, has studied the possibility that formalized ritual layouts used by preliterate cultures ubiquitously at small scales, could, with simple but accurate surveying techniques have been laid out at very large scales of landscape. The most transformative idea here is that small scale ritual of plazas and domestic dwelling interiors didn’t morph into monumental architecture as sites and social organization evolved. The ritual layouts of shamanistic practice, to the contrary, long before monumental ceremonial sites, developed its power through association with a real, formally structured large-scale landscape (the Warao as best example in the new world, Wilbert 1993). Then, as social organization became more sedentary, these landscape frameworks may hypothetically have provided the locations where first “architecturalized” ritual settings beyond dwelling and village scales were built. If true, requisite prehistoric surveying might likely have been experienced as part of ritual process. These ideas are now at least known and cited by Ancestral Pueblo (a.k.a. Chaco et.al.) archaeologists through a limited list of articles, and a book currently under review (Doxtater 2019a, 2007, 2003, 2002). Aspects of this work detail precedents and techniques for prehistoric surveying and are not presently repeated. The author’s primary mentor on Mayan culture, and especially spatial manifestations of such, is a long-term friend and classmate from a professional program in architecture. Falken 4 Forshaw eventually wrote a dissertation on the layout of the Caracol at Chichen Itza as part of a PhD in geography (Forshaw 1984). On multiple occasions, while doing research on large scale prehistoric space in the U.S. Southwest, Scandinavia, or on Minoan Crete, I would visit Falken at his studio. Even though he made his living practicing architecture, his studio/library is probably one of the best repositories of information about Mayan cultural space that exists as a personal office. I learned immensely about the formal geometry and layout processes of ball courts, plazas, e-groups, pyramids, observatories, and of small objects as well; most have either archaeoastronomical or purely mathematical interpretations. Despite gaining much from such a mentorship from a unique Mayan scholar, the present volume, however, only integrates tangentially with these scales of geometric design. At larger scales a certain amount of published analysis exists in this regard, illustrating how cosmology is reflected in some site assemblages (e.g. Mathews & Garber 2004, Ashmore 1991, Ashmore 2002), and how observation of astronomical phenomena often plays into formal features and layout (Sprajc, et. al. 2009, Almers & Rice 2006, Malmström 1978, Aveni et.al. 2003, Green 2014, Kelley & Kelley 2000).