Dimensión urbana y percepción en la ciudad maya Clásica de Palenque

In this article I address two interrelated topics: space construction and the perception of the built environment at Palenque, Chiapas, during the Late Classic Period. Starting from the study of Palenque’s urban morphology and by using Geographic Information System’s tools, I aim at underlying intentionality in specific buildings’ position and to explore how people’s urbanity, that is their condition in the city and the experience of otherness, would have transformed their perception of the environment. To this end, I will consider some characteristics of the environment such as labor investment, infrastructure and resource access, land subdivision in architectural groups and their distribution. I argue that these elements, if considered in relation with circulation and visibility, suggest specific planning strategies and point to social status difference within city sectors and their inhabitants

Una proposta di lettura integrale della città Maya antica: la morfologia urbana di Chinikihá e Palenque (Chiapas, Messico) nel periodo classico

Research on urban and architectonical contexts in Mesoamerica have generally concentrated on the study and excavation of settlements’ civic-ceremonial core. Nevertheless, in recent years, several projects aim to understand the real extension of Mesoamerican cities and their territorial and political integration. The Palenque Regional Project, directed by Dr. Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo, has concentrated its efforts on the register and documentation of the archaeological sites within the area controlled by the Palenque kingdom in the Classic period. In this regional context, Chinikihá and Palenque are the only settlements that we can define as capitals of a large territory, because of their public architecture as temples, ball games, big central plazas and the hieroglyphic inscriptions, which testify the presence of a ruling dynasty. The urban complexity they manifest, with respect to the other 600 registered sites, confirm their predominant role and their capacity to concentrate people and activities. In this paper, in order to understand the functioning of the city as a response to people´s movement, differential accessibility, buildings hierarchy and association, I propose a methodology to study the ancient Maya urban morphology. This is composed of two topics: a first typological categorization of architectural compounds and groups, and the adoption of the five formal categories proposed by the American urbanist Kevin Lynch which, in my opinion, help outlying the perception that the users could have had of their surrounding built environment. The methodological proposal here formulated is a first approach to understand the urban morphology of ancient Maya cities: I consider that, from an architectonic point of view, it is a fundamental task to complement archaeological investigations with the study of the urban context, in order to better comprehend and propose how space was used and how it would have been to live in a planned city and in a symbolic environment

The Mausoleum Architectural Project: Reinterpreting Palenque's temple of the inscriptions through 3D data-driven architectural analysis

The Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, Mexico, is an outstanding example of Classic Maya architecture erected in the seventh century as the funerary building for ruler K'inich Janab Pakal. For decades, scholars have speculated on its construction sequence and the potential existence of hidden rooms on either side of Pakal's mortuary chamber. This article aims to advance understanding of the Temple's architectural context in light of new 3D data. After reviewing the application of drone-based photogrammetry and terrestrial Light Detection and Ranging in the Maya area, we argue that these techniques are capable of enhancing the architectural analysis of the Temple of the Inscriptions and showing that this structure was part of a larger architectural project, encompassing the adjacent Temple XIII, and the connecting stepped building platform. Our findings demonstrate that the basal platforms for the Temple of the Inscriptions and Temple XIII were erected contemporaneously and that the design of their mortuary chambers follows a tripartite layout we identified in Palenque's elite funerary architecture and associated mortuary practices. We conclude that these three buildings were part of a mausoleum architectural project, the construction of which was initiated by Pakal to reshape Palenque's site-core and enshrine the ruling family's power and ancestors

Building Cultural Heritage Resilience through Remote Sensing: An Integrated Approach Using Multi-Temporal Site Monitoring, Datafication, and Web-GL Visualization

In the American West, wildfires and earthquakes are increasingly threatening the archaeological, historical, and tribal resources that define the collective identity and connection with the past for millions of Americans. The loss of said resources diminishes societal understanding of the role cultural heritage plays in shaping our present and future. This paper examines the viability of employing stationary and SLAM-based terrestrial laser scanning, close-range photogrammetry, automated surface change detection, GIS, and WebGL visualization techniques to enhance the preservation of cultural resources in California. Our datafication approach combines multi-temporal remote sensing monitoring of historic features with legacy data and collaborative visualization to document and evaluate how environmental threats affect built heritage. We tested our methodology in response to recent environmental threats from wildfire and earthquakes at Bodie, an iconic Gold Rush-era boom town located on the California and Nevada border. Our multi-scale results show that the proposed approach effectively integrates highly accurate 3D snapshots of Bodie’s historic buildings before/after disturbance, or post-restoration, with surface change detection and online collaborative visualization of 3D geospatial data to monitor and preserve important cultural resources at the site. This study concludes that the proposed workflow enhances the monitoring of at-risk California’s cultural heritage and makes a call to action to employ remote sensing as a pathway to advanced planning. View Full-Tex

Developing an interoperable cloud-based visualization workflow for 3D archaeological heritage data. The Palenque 3D Archaeological Atlas

In archaeology, 3D data has become ubiquitous, as researchers routinely capture high resolution photogrammetry and LiDAR models and engage in laborious 3D analysis and reconstruction projects at every scale: artifacts, buildings, and entire sites. The raw data and processed 3D models are rarely shared as their computational dependencies leave them unusable by other scholars. In this paper we outline a novel approach for cloud-based collaboration, visualization, analysis, contextualization, and archiving of multi-modal giga-resolution archaeological heritage 3D data. The Palenque 3D Archaeological Atlas builds on an open source WebGL systems that efficiently interlink, merge, present, and contextualize the Big Data collected at the ancient Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, allowing researchers and stakeholders to visualize, access, share, measure, compare, annotate, and repurpose massive complex archaeological datasets from their web-browsers

Arquitectura zoque prehispánica en El Higo, selva El Ocote, Chiapas

El trabajo que desarrollé en la selva El Ocote en el marco de las temporadas 2003 y 2004 del Proyecto Arqueológico Río La Venta, ha finalizo con una primera descripción y clasificación tipológica de las evidencias arquitectónicas que, con base en el análisis de las mamposterías, las superposiciones visibles en la supericie y con la comparación de los datos de excavación, permiten proceder a formular hipótesis preliminares acerca de la sucesión cronológica de las estructuras

Arquitectura zoque prehispánica en El Higo, selva El Ocote, Chiapas

El trabajo que desarrollé en la selva El Ocote en el marco de las temporadas 2003 y 2004 del Proyecto Arqueológico Río La Venta, ha finalizo con una primera descripción y clasificación tipológica de las evidencias arquitectónicas que, con base en el análisis de las mamposterías, las superposiciones visibles en la supericie y con la comparación de los datos de excavación, permiten proceder a formular hipótesis preliminares acerca de la sucesión cronológica de las estructuras

Arquitectura zoque prehispánica en El Higo, Selva El Ocote, Chiapas

Come parte del estudio architettonico e urbanistico si descrive il sito archeologico di El Higo, Chiapas, Messico. Si propone un estudio di morfologia urbana e si stabiliscono le tipologie edilizie a partire dai risultati degli scavi archeologici e della cronotipologia

Arquitectura de la arqueología. Análisis de la estructura urbana de Chinikihá y Palenque entre los siglos VIII y IX

Le cittá di Palenque e Chinikihá, in Chiapas, Messico, si studiano a partire da un analisi urbano e delle tipologie dei complessi architettonici. Parte fondamentale della metodologia per comprendere la forma urbana delle due cittá del Classico maya (300-900 d.C.), si basa sullo studio della immagine della cittá proposto da Kevin Lynch. Grazie ai cinque elementi identificati da Lynch, si propongono per le due cittá circolazione, suddivisione in quartieri, restrizioni di accesso etc. Si adotta inoltre il concetto di isovista per esplorare la posizione relativa di un astante e i monumenti del centro religioso e pubblico delle cittá, per capire l'intenzione soggiacente al progetto architettonico finalizzata a creare un impatto visivo sulle persone