LOCAL STONE UTILIZATION BY PRE-COLUMBIAN MAYA PEOPLE ON THE YUCATAN PENINSULA IN AND AROUND THE CITY OF MAYAPAN, MEXICO

Rocks exposed on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico are mainly shallow subtidal Cenozoic limestones deposited on a broad, ramp-shaped carbonate platform on top of the now deeply-buried end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact crater, whose surface expression is the ring of sinkholes (cenotes) of the NW peninsula’s relatively flat karst lowlands. The peninsula is also famous for its extensive Maya archaeological record, and this study focuses on stone resource utilization in and around the last Maya capital Mayapán (c. 1100 to 1450 AD) located just inside the ring of cenotes.

Limestone and the products of its subaerial weathering are the only locally abundant stone resources and were utilized by the Maya to maximum extent for a variety of purposes. Monumental and residential architecture regularly utilized the antecedent topography of small rounded hills (altillos). Flat limestone blocks for outer walls were carved using chert tools after extraction from shallow local quarries. Cut stones were often recycled from earlier Terminal Classic sites in the area. Calcrete or caliche crust also provided naturally flat rock surfaces. Interior walls and solid structures were filled with locally available limestone and paleosol fragments. The general lack of large quarries also suggests that most limestone for architecture and lime production was sourced directly from the exposed karstified surface.

Coarse porous coquina limestone is the most abundant stone in the Mayapán area and was used extensively for making of lime, building blocks, some sculptures, grinding and abrading tools, and disc-shaped beehive lids. Common also is calcarenite limestone, which was relatively easy to carve into sculptures using chert tools due to its finer-grained, uniform texture. Especially suitable for stone tools, but not very abundant, is piedra dura or well indurated muddy limestone found as subrounded pseudoclasts in extensively weathered limestone (sascab), excavated from shallow pits (sascaberas). These fragments were easily shaped into a variety of hammering/pounding, grinding/pulverizing, and smoothing/flattening tools, while sascab was used as construction fill. The results illustrate the importance and versatility of limestone use for development of the Maya civilization.