Xtampak

Santa Rosa Xtampak is an important archaeological site of the Maya in Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula in the state of Campeche. The Ruinenort located 26 kilometers east of Hopelchen near the border with the state of Yucatán. In Santa Rosa Xtampak the Puuc style and the Chenes style of Maya architecture meet. The place is located at the highest point of a hill chain, which limits a savanna in the south.

History of Research

The first modern visitors were John Lloyd Stephens in 1841 accompanied by Frederick Catherwood. Due to the depopulation through the box war later visits were considerably more difficult and thus succeeded Teobert painter penetrate only at the third attempt in 1891 to the ruins. The next in-depth research stay by Harry ED Pollock took place in 1936. He also published the first survey of the locality by George W. Brainerd, Karl Ruppert and Lawrence Roys from the year 1949. The three -story palace has since practiced great attractiveness to researchers. Since the mid- 1990s to take excavations and restorations, which initially were led by Antonio Benavides Castillo and were then continued by Renée Lorelei Zapata.

Buildings

The remains of the buildings of Santa Rosa Xtampak take about a circular area diameter of almost 800 meters on the top of the hill one, the palace and the largest pyramid located near the center. It is dominated by long building with a single or double series of spaces that frame the rectangular spaces. Other places especially in the southeast of the village are defined by high pyramids. The three -story palace forms both of his plan as of the situation in the middle of a square one exception.

The three -story palace

On its three floors of the palace has 44 rooms. However, unlike the same size or larger palaces in the Puuc area, he is not the result of a longer planning development, but was built by an ingenious plan in one step. Alone, the number and arrangement of the stairs makes precise planning significantly. The face side of the palace faces east. On this page, a monumental staircase leads to the third level and lands in front of a giant snake mouth entrance. Too small side temple on the second level lead up each individual stairs. All other at least 10 outside stairs are not functional, but have the slope and the forward inclination of the stairs, which the Rio Bec style are even more pronounced for the Chenes style, but characteristic. In this style also refer both accessible from the west side rectangular angled interior stairs that lead exactly mirror images of each other on the second and third level. As with Maya buildings for structural reasons, can jump the floors from the bottom upward, to a width of the room back.

The structure of the building is thought excellent. On the display side, the east side, the rooms repeat on both sides of the monumental staircase largely identical on all three floors. There are rooms with three divided by brick pillar entrance. Overall, this input takes almost a the whole length of the room, so this was entirely open to view from outside and was therefore unsuitable for residential purposes. This was certainly so intended, which is why these rooms probably served for representation purposes for the local rulers. The rooms on the first and second level each had a room beyond, was missing at the third level for the course.

On the north and south sides that are mirror images, is at the lowest level in each case a long room with three times parted input. Behind them are two smaller rooms next to each other. There is a wide wall plate which a narrative figurative relief showed in a slightly recessed box that has fallen victim to robbers Art since Pollock's visit between their inputs. This relief appears to have been transferred and pasted from another building here, where the stones partially do not fit together. From the front room of a side door leads to a room below the side temples. The Architects of Santa Rosa Xtampak statics of their buildings were obviously so sure that they frequently practiced otherwise avoided as far as possible superposition of rooms. On the higher level, this room arrangement was repeated in a simpler form. Here is just a front room with triple gegliedertem input available.

On the back of the palace there is a set of seven inputs, which are arranged in three groups: a medium with three inputs and two side each having two inputs. The average input of the middle group is only possible in a small space and only the symmetry was probably built for. The two lateral areas of the central group are of particular interest. From them, a narrow passage into a small square room, of which the interior stairs can be reached by a corridor that lead in several turns on the first level. In order for the internal staircase is below the unbesteigbaren external staircase and replacing them functional. The stairs lead there in an outside door that leads to a paragraph that led to the roof of the lower story to the whole building around (now partially collapsed ). It is noteworthy that the outputs of the staircase are decorated here and at the next higher level in the form of small houses. From the access to this output, the staircase also leads in two other windings on the top level, where it flows back into the cottage output. Again you can go on the roof of the underlying spaces around the building. The two lateral space groups of the west side each have a room beyond, and thus correspond to the usual pattern. But here, a side door of the front room in a small side room, which is located at the exact spot where two unbesteigbare stairs at right angles are opposite.

On all four corners of the palace this unbesteigbaren stairs leading to the second level located in the small temples that were built directly over an underlying space.

On the third level is due to the recoil of stories just a simple chain space available, but the space for the internal stairs at the back of the building had to be through clever space planning. The rooms open after all the east side: a large central room, with on both sides of two small, protruding, behind which lie the interior stairs, and on the sides two rooms with three times the input that correspond to the underlying of the east facade.

The structure of the third level is unique in the Maya area: Before the middle room strongly receding there is a small courtyard, which is formed opposite side of the back of the queue space portal, which is at the upper end of the monumental staircase. It does so not in a room but in a courtyard and is therefore only an illusion input.

The facades of the palace were kept simple. A triple- articulated base whose central element is mostly smooth, only at the side temples from a band of small columns consisting. The medial panel is undecorated anywhere, although some recessed areas are arranged symmetrically on the back wall with larger surfaces. The brick pillars correspond to the Puuc style. Also the brick door beams reminiscent of the early stages of the Puuc style. The middle cornice has three bands, all of which are smooth. The upper panels are slightly inclined inwards and also smooth. From them stand out large stone cones that have worn once stucco figures. The top cornice always corresponds to the middle, although the projecting top element is added. Again, there are far above stone cones. Whether a roof ridge was present, is not to say with certainty.

Inside the palace are found in many of the rooms bricked benches at the ends of the rooms. The interior walls are smooth, mostly still covered well with stucco. Is found especially on the doors a peculiar decoration: a sawtooth resembling a band, modeled entirely in stucco.

The building with the snake mouth Portal

The snake mouth portal decorates the facade of a small room, which is located laterally in a longer, usually verstürzten series of rooms. The space jumps from the series of spaces in front of more than half a meter, and thus creates the typical for the Chenes style impression of individual buildings. The actual input is unusually narrow and is three levels above the ground. The otherwise mostly encountered platform in front of the entrance, which is advanced mandible missing here.

At a building several changes were made, which may also shed light on similar structures in other Hofkomplexen of Santa Rosa Xtampak. After the completion of the building a stairway was set on the back that goes up to the roof of the room. There, a small room was probably built or at least planned. In order to stabilize the roof for that extra space, the rear wall has been strengthened to nearly half of the vault with a wall core, which was covered on the front with stucco. From the back of a rekonstuirte in its lower part staircase leads to the upper space. It is unusual that the staircase has at its center a central Teppenwange, which is designed as a tail or abdomen of the reptile, and which in turn ends in a small snake throat.

From the adjoining buildings on either side, only small remnants remain. About a dreigliederigen base followed by a, as far as recognizable, smooth lower wall surface. the middle cornice has a tripartite, find themselves in the recessed middle band groups of three low small columns. On the upper wall surface groups of three small columns are also to be found between smooth wall surfaces that are more reminiscent of forms in the Puuc mosaic style. The top cornice represents the mean plus the cantilevered stone row as top seal.

The Red House

Tight at the building of the snake mouth Portals are two three-roomed buildings, which are remarkably well preserved. Teoberto painters called the front of the two buildings, the " Red House " because of traces of a corresponding painting. It consists of three rooms in a row. The facade corresponds to the which can be seen at the Palace and in the Cuartel. The corners are made of a thick column. The bottom wall surface has ( on the resultant southern short side ) in the center of the wall of a bunch of two narrow columns. Quite close, separated only by a gap of less than one meter, is the L-shaped building, which differs in the upper facade of the Red House by the absence of an actual middle cornice. Instead, the projecting cornice in the manner of a top panel tilts inward slightly, closes above but with a three -membered cornice from the traditional form. This is a in the Puuc style rather unusual shape, which is very common in the Early Puuc.

The building with the double snake foot- passage

South of the Red House includes a simple -held building with four rooms. Deposed from this is almost opposite the monumental staircase of the palace one of its kind unique building. It consists of two wings on either side of a passage. From the passageway lead inputs to the passage in two parallel spaces. Then lie north and south of the passage of two double rooms, which open to the east and the west, with a portal with two piers. Remarkable, however, is particularly the facade decoration of the passage, of a large, visible today despite reconstruction only in the most parts under snake foot- Portal displays both sides. Whether and how this portal was closed at the top, is not evident from the present building features.

The Cuartel

This misleading name ( German: the barracks ) is a large square called of elongated buildings that frame a courtyard of ungfefähr 50 m side length. In 2010, the northern building was complete, the two restored on the west and south sides for the most part.

Good condition, only the northern part. It consists of two sets of three rooms that a small pyramid lie east and west, leading up to the terrain surrounding of the courtyard and from the deeper stairs. This pyramid may have been built later by the originally existing at this point passage. From the small building located on the top of the small pyramid minimal residues are obtained.

The façade of the two identically designed wing follows exactly the Chenes style. The middle room jumps back slightly, causing the typical impression of juxtaposed individual houses arises. This impression is deliberately exacerbated by a narrow niche between each of the three spaces belonging facade. This niche widens in the upper wall surface, as if there supernatants against the inwardly sloping wall surfaces of two houses. The facade itself united elements of the early Puuc and Chenes of style: a zweigliederiger smooth base, a bottom wall surface that is substantially smooth, having only on either side of the side doors and pillars at the corners. The corners here are designed differently: either a thick column or a pair of normal thickness columns. The middle cornice is tripartite, with a little projecting oblique lower band, an overlying also oblique row, in the long smooth surfaces with groups of three low small columns alternate and a low upper band, from the always flagstones as carriers of no longer extant figures protrude. This medium-sized cornice jumps over the central entrance to the intrinsic height upwards and thus provides a framework that emphasizes the central entrance. The same effect also two fields to either side of the door, which are filled with a triple cascade of masks, which are surrounded by a zig -zag strip. The top cornice is similar to the average, only that upwards the usual were set wide projecting outwardly oblique keystones.

The structure of the western building corresponded to that of the northern wing, each with three rooms on each side of the small pyramid with her (not restored here ) stairs. The building consisted of a series of rooms. Strange here is the solution of the corner at the junction with the northern building through a set in the corner, accessible only by the adjacent small room space. Between the western and the southern building was a narrow passage.

The southern building consisted of a double row of rooms at the corners were small temple, which led up unclimbable steep stairs. In the center, unlike the two wings described is a pass. The eastern building had two rows of rooms and in the middle of a small pyramid. This wing was apparently not directly connected with the others.

The main pyramid

The main pyramid lying approximately in the middle of Sansta Pink Xtampak is actually an elongated structure that closes a large courtyard in the north. Probably was the main pyramid of three or more adjacent dense and coalesced pyramids. At the middle resulted in their lower parts up a well-preserved monumental staircase. Before the pyramid stood a number of steles.

The West Group

The group is just over a hundred meters to the southwest of the palace at the beginning of the slope. Receive and partially restored are an L- shaped building with probably 11 rooms, some of which are stretched extremely wide. In one of the rooms is a residue of paint is provided on an end stone. At the southern wing of the facade is partly original. There is an average of three smooth cornice decorated members to see and above the entrance to the most in the corner space out standing stones on the upper wall surface that may have worn a large stucco mask. The doorways have small capitals to the masonry of well-cut stone door jamb. Wall art and decor are broadly consistent with the Proto - Puuc style. Between two rooms of the north wing performs a perhaps originally vaulted staircase to a higher level.

The Southeast quadrangle

The square is located on the southeastern edge of the center of Santa Rosa Xtampak. It consists of four long buildings with one or two rows of rooms around a square courtyard. On all pages except the Western is located in the middle of the wing a raised portion with upstream stairs. Of the buildings on the raised part no discernible traces longer obtain. The lower parts of the building are partially badly damaged and therefore difficult to reconstruct. Overall, the Southeast quadrangle is structurally very similar to the Cuartel.

The eastern part consists of two consecutive spaces on both sides of a wide steps at an elevated component. The external inputs were divided by two columns in three apertures, and the southern entrance had been bricked in part later. Noteworthy is the compound with the southern part. Originally it was between the two components, a narrow, winding passage, which was later covered with a walking across a corner of the vault, for which purpose additional side walls were recovered. Whether this passage blind ended a a narrow space or leading outside, can not be determined without excavation. The façade displays the corners thick corner posts, the base and the middle cornice have three very powerful limbs, namely a rounded, bead-like central element, a projecting far downwards and outwards lower and less geböschtes upper element.

The rooms of the southern component open partially to the outside, partially ( covered at the southeast corner ) in the outer corners. The arrangement of the rooms is confusing. It is clear that under the raised central part of at least one accessible from the side of smaller interior has found.

The northern component is created similarly, here are some of the rooms from outside to enter the quadrangle been. Between this component and the east there was a similar tortuous passage as at the southeast corner. A still -standing portion of the outer façade makes the middle and upper cornice of an extremely wide projecting lower band and also very large smooth band recognize it.

The western building, which consisted of only a single row of rooms was connected directly to the south. It consisted of two separate parts, so let in the middle of a passage open. Here, too, had a small side room access from outside of the square, next to the open north-west corner, which today serves directly as access to the square. The facade is equal to that of the North Building, only in this case also the base, which consists of one of two narrow bands bordered Säulchenreihe to recognize. From the top panel stand out some large stone slabs that may have once worn figures of stone or stucco.

Monuments

Sta. Pink Xtampak is one of the few places in the Puuc region and its border zone, which has a greater number of legible hieroglyphic inscriptions with accurate data:

The stelae were located in the courtyard south of the Great Pyramid, the vaults deck stones come from the palace. Only the Stelae 5 and 7 type the date in the Long Count, the rest are truncated information.

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