CHAPTER TWELVE
STORAGE PLACES IN THE MAYA AREA
Cristina Vidal-Lorenzo, Maria Luisa Vázquez-de-Ágredos-Pascual, and Gaspar Muñoz-Cosme
Introduction
In the cities of most of the ancient cultures their storage buildings are readily recognizable, as may be seen, by way of example, in the large Roman granaries or the Inka grain houses. However, we have not been able to establish the type of building used for this purpose in the Maya area, as we do not have the archaeological, iconographic, or literary information necessary to identify any such buildings.
What is traditionally considered a “storage space” in this area is not so much a building, but rather an underground store known by the name of a chultun, this being a Maya term that has been defined as an “excavated cistern or silo to store maize or collect rainwater” (Barrera 1980: 144). These chultuns abound in a large part of the Maya area and come in different shapes and sizes, and while they were primarily employed to store rainwater or perishable food, on some occasions these were used as special areas for offerings and burials or for other ritual uses and, as such, may be considered as multifunctional areas.
While much has been written about these structures, very few studies have been made regarding other possible storage installations in this area, because a lack of evidence has handicapped research in this respect. However, it would not be unreasonable to imagine that a complex society such as the Maya would also have far larger and specially constructed storage areas, and that it is then necessary to gain more substantial knowledge regarding the storage systems used in the past and their workings, as this information would, in turn, provide a greater awareness of how the Maya economy actually worked. To this end, we consider it necessary to differentiate between the storage systems used by the common people and those associated with the ruling classes and attempt to answer a whole series of questions: Where did the ancient Maya keep their food products? Were these similar to the chultuns? What types of structures or rooms were used to store luxury goods acquired by the ruling classes through tribute, the exchange of gifts, and through importation from distant regions? How visible were all these spaces? Where were the royal libraries and weapons stored?
It is difficult to answer these questions when all that remain are empty buildings and the material culture vestiges generally found in a debris context. It is also necessary to bear in mind the large regional and temporal differences within the Maya culture with respect to political organization and economic systems. Here, a brief introduction on all these aspects would help to obtain a clearer picture.
Considerations Regarding the Economic System of the Classic Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization developed throughout a long period over a vast expanse of territory covering more than 324,000 square kilometers, one characterized by great environmental heterogeneity. The diversity is such that any study of the Maya area has to be made by distinguishing the two large subareas: the Maya lowlands—these are in turn subdivided into the northern lowlands and the southern lowlands—and the Maya highlands, this being a separation responding to elements of both climate and topography. This separation is important as the inherent characteristics of each of these territories from the rainforests and seasonal wetlands of the lowlands to the mountainous and volcanic lands of the Altiplano had an influence on the methods of production and exchange in each of these regions and were decisive in the formation of the cities and the urban models adopted and developed in each case (Muñoz-Cosme 2006: 15).
Furthermore, and with respect to the political organization of the Maya, while there were indeed very powerful and dominating ruling centers, the ruling classes did not hold a total control over production and, as such, it is not possible to speak of just one Mayan economic system at state level, but rather of regional and, in some cases, interregional economic systems. This then means that, with the exception of certain relevant cases, the control exercised by the leaders of the different political bodies over production and trade would have been restricted only to certain products.
How then did the Maya economy work? This is a difficult question to answer on account of what we discussed above. It is one that has given rise to different theories. P. Rice (2009a: 149; 2009b: 81) suggests the presence of a relatively decentralized political-ritual economic system, characterized by a ritual form of production, palace economy, elite feasting, and periodical markets, set within a rotating network of geopolitical capitals based on K’atun (20-year) and may (256-year) cycles, that is to say, the accumulation and circulation of material goods coincided with the feasts sponsored by the court and the periodical markets held on calendrical festivals. Other authors (Dahlin et al. 2007), on the basis of geochemical analysis of certain sites presumably used as markets in centers of the Yucatan Peninsula, are more inclined to defend the existence of a market economy, which would have stimulated the import and trade of food products. This is a theory that refutes some of the traditional beliefs of Maya specialists who have always held that the Maya lowlands were self-sufficient in food and basic resources, and that it was subsequently not necessary to develop long-distance trade routes to redistribute the same. While nobody refutes that these routes ever existed, it is considered that these were used for the transportation of other types of products, such as exotic or luxury items, to satisfy the needs of the ruling classes in their rites and ceremonies, as well as other raw materials necessary for daily life but exclusive to particular areas, such as salt, cacao, cotton, and certain stones and minerals employed in the manufacture of tools and utensils, such as the hard volcanic and obsidian stones (Masson 2002: 10–12; Demarest 2004: 152–160).
If this were so, the population would have gained access to these more essential products at local or regional markets, while the elite would have gained these as tribute. This tribute had to be paid by people in subordinate centers to the rulers of dominant centers. This practice is readily known to us through iconographic and epigraphic sources. The local dignitaries would have, in turn, received tribute from the local population in the form of basic food products and other craft objects. Luxury items were exclusive to the elite and would have been received in the form of tribute or through gift exchange. These were not goods that could be obtained at the local markets, but only through complex social acts geared to promoting or strengthening political alliances or specific relations between the individuals involved, this being one of the most favored subjects of Maya iconography (Figure 12.1). It is also possible that certain exotic products found in distant regions, or even outside the Maya area, could have been obtained by importation, such as certain minerals and precious stones of highly symbolic and even magical value used in the preparation of pigments and in the preparation of valuable objects for the ruling classes.
Be that as it may, it is clear that the lack of a highly centralized economic system did away with the need for large containers to store food or other basic products and much less for specific warehouses, such as the granaries so commonly found in other cultures. Examples of these are the Inka qollqa storehouses that served to meet the temporary influx of people during military expeditions or ceremonial activities, or indeed the Roman granaries that were seen as an ideal solution to feed the nonrural population (particularly townsmen and soldiers). This is to say that the Inkas, the Romans, and many other Old World civilizations were all dependent on intense forms of basic food production in order to feed their citizens. These, in turn, had to be protected by soldiers and other forces, and hence the need for warehouses to store these provisions, which were only distributed under the strict control of the ruling classes.
Figure 12.1 Painted vase that shows a tribute scene in a Maya palace (sacks of beans, fans, stacks of textiles, and a black tripod ceramic plate). Photo ©Justin Kerr, K2914 (www.mayavase.com).
However, in the Maya area, characterized by an economic system in which different means of production and exchange coexisted among dispersed and apparently self-sufficient populations, the storage requirements were essentially of a domestic and, subsequently, perishable nature in the same manner as their dwellings. In this respect it is pertinent to refer to the ethnoarchaeological study made by Michael P. Smyth (1991) in the Puuc area (Yucatan) (see Smyth, Chapter 11, this volume), in which he showed a number of examples of how this activity was still being carried out in certain Maya communities of Yucatan. In this respect one of the main archaeological sources is found at the Joya de Cerén settlement, the subject of the following section.
One has to ask where the Maya stored the remainder of the products obtained through tribute and gift exchange, which were delivered to the ruling classes at their impressive palaces. In our opinion (Vidal-Lorenzo and Muñoz-Cosme 2009: 115; Vidal-Lorenzo, Muñoz-Cosme, and Valdés-Gómez 2011: 219), shared by other authors (Houston and Inomata 2009: 255), these items were stored within these same palaces which, in addition to serving as the places of residence for the elite, also acted as foci of authority. This hypothesis may be made on the basis of findings such as those at Copán and Aguateca and from certain conclusions gathered from the recently researched settlement of La Blanca (Petén, see below).
Domestic Storage
As we have already indicated, the best archaeological testimony of the type of storage that may have been employed by the Maya in prehispanic times to conserve their food products and other everyday items is found at the archaeological site of Joya de Cerén, located in the Zapotitlán valley (El Salvador). In approximately AD 600 the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano buried the area in a thick layer of volcanic ash that preserved the remains in excellent condition, and from which it subsequently earned the name of the “American Pompeii” The excavations at the site on successive occasions ever since its discovery in 1976 (Sheets 1983, 1997; Sheets and McKee 1989, 1990; Sheets and Kievit 1992; Sheets and Simmons 1993; Sheets and Brown 1995) showed Joya de Cerén to be a settlement organized in domestic groups that had three functional types of structures: living quarters, kitchens, and storage facilities, which at one time could have been associated with a steam bath or temazcal (McKee 1997: 243–255).
The spaces used for storage were raised at the south of the building used as living quarters (McKee 1990: 90–108). Here an adobe clay platform supported a small perishable structure, the walls and roof of which were formed entirely of branches, twigs, and clay in a wattle-and-daub construction system known locally as bajareque. These same materials were also used to make the single shelf or tapanco generally found in these small cellars and that were used to hold some of the storeroom items, with the remainder being kept in large baskets, pots, and other containers. One of the best preserved storage areas at Joya de Cerén is Structure 7, which contains eight large pots, a large bowl, and a shelf along the west wall (Lentz et al. 1996: 251). Other smaller bowls also served to keep other items, and particularly foodstuffs, neat and tidy. This may be seen in Structure 4, a small building formed by two areas that were initially used as living quarters and later as a storage area with its corresponding tapancos. This reveals the types of items that were normally stored in these structures, ranging from numerous storage and serving pots to utensils made from obsidian, stones, and mortars, and even a drawer for maize that still contained a number of cobs (Lentz et al. 1996).
The results obtained from microscopy and flotation analysis of the organic remains contained in urns and smaller items of pottery show that the Joya de Cerén storehouses were used to store all types of domestic items and not just food. In this way, the scientific examination of the organic remains preserved inside many of the pots deposited in the Joya de Cerén storehouses, and specifically those of Structures 4, 6, and 7, shows that at least four types of products were kept in these areas: food, textile fibers, aromatic woods, and other items of general use (Figure 12.2).
Figure 12.2 A storage house of Joya de Cerén. Photo M. L. Vázquez-de-Ágredos.
There is evidence of all these grains, seeds, skins, barks, and woods that were used for foodstuffs (maize, beans, chili, cacao, pumpkin, guava, plum, and grasses), ritual practices (aromatic bark of cedar and pine), medicines (capulín cherry), and textiles (cotton, agave, and capulín). Their discovery together with the utensils used for preparation and consumption—pestles and mortars, obsidian cutting knives, and clay pots to serve and eat food—explains the great importance of these storage areas for the individuals who lived in each of the domestic groups at the Joya de Cerén. They served to keep the stores required for daily life in prime condition. This would then explain the presence of propitiatory offerings that have been found in the roofs of some of these buildings, including cinnabar, jadeite, and other greenstones of similar economic and symbolic value for the Maya (McKee 1990: 90–108).
From the excavation and study of the storehouses at Joya de Cerén it is then possible to extrapolate these findings in order to establish the standard type of area employed for this purpose by the ancient Maya culture.
Perishable Buildings
It is very possible that the storehouses used throughout the Maya area to store domestic and everyday goods, including food, were built of perishable materials appropriate to each region. The construction of these buildings in the Maya lowlands and transitional zones would be made of mixtures of bajareque (wattle-and-daub) and lime and not the bajareque and clay characteristic of Joya de Cerén and other highland settlements where adobe clay was more abundant. It is precisely on account of this perishable nature that these structures have remained “invisible” to archaeologists other than those that remained buried at the site in El Salvador following the volcanic eruption at the start of the Late Classic period.
In this settlement, as in other settlements of the Maya highlands, lowlands, and transitional zones, there is archaeological evidence that the living quarters, kitchen, and storehouse were set beside a vegetable garden, which provided much of the food preserved there. In some instances the buildings were adjoined by a “sacred garden” that served for the cultivation of plants of a ceremonial and aromatic nature in the center of the Maya cities, that is, beside the sacred buildings, like Group E of Uaxactún (Harrison 2001: 75). Alongside these domestic vegetable gardens of the common people and the sacred gardens that served the ritual purposes of the elite, these perishable structures served the important purpose of keeping all these domestic items fresh in a far better way than a more solid, stone construction could.
Location Close to Living Quarters
This arrangement is seen not only from the archaeological evidence found at Joya de Cerén but also as a result of ethnographic investigations. In this respect, it is common to find the houses of modern Maya communities set alongside a building of more modest dimensions that is used for storage (Harrison 2001), and that generally housed all types of items and not just the products of the domestic vegetable garden set just a few meters away.
Presence of Internal Fittings for Better Use of the Storage Area
These storehouses would commonly have been fitted with shelves such as those found in the Joya de Cerén storehouses, and would have been used to hold domestic goods and objects in pots and containers. These shelves would most probably have been made in wood from the surrounding areas.
Distribution of Items in Clay, Wood, or Fiber Containers
With the exception of the wooden box used to store maize at Structure 7, the containers found in the storehouses at Joya de Cerén are all pottery. However, it cannot be discounted that the ancient Maya would use this type of container together with others made from wood and fiber, which would not have been recorded by archaeologists on account of the perishable nature of both of these materials. In the iconographic representations found on ceramic pots and on the vaults of a number of palaces in Campeche and Yucatan, the god K’awil has been painted together with sacks of this type full of grain and bearing inscriptions referring to abundance and prosperity (Staines 2008: fig. 7).
Use for the Conservation of Domestic Items and Not Just Food
In accordance with the findings at Joya de Cerén, the storehouse built alongside the living quarters, kitchen, and vegetable garden was used to store all types of domestic goods and items and not just food. Furthermore, these small buildings were not suited for the conservation of all types of food, but purely those of agricultural nature. In this respect, the speed with which meat decomposes in such hot and humid conditions as those so prevalent in the Maya area made it necessary to consume meat shortly after the animal had been slaughtered; however, in all reality, meat was a luxury almost exclusively reserved for the elite (Tiesler and Cucina 2005: 43). To the same extent, fish could not be kept in these types of storerooms and had to be conserved by other means, one of which possibly including the water distribution channels (Sharer 1998: 430).
Use of Offerings
The importance of the items deposited in these domestic storehouses explains the presence of offerings placed there to guarantee their safekeeping and the ensuing well-being of those who benefited from their consumption and use.
The storehouses described above most probably correspond to the type most widely used during prehispanic times to preserve domestic goods, in accordance with archaeological findings and the customs recorded ethnographically to this day. However, we should not ignore that other spaces were also available to the ancient Maya for this purpose in the form of caves. The proximity of many caves to the dwellings in ancient cities and their cooler air made these an ideal place for the preservation of food products in general, and the frequent archaeological discoveries of rustic, domestic pottery of varying shapes and sizes all point to the possible use of these caves as storage spaces in the Maya area over the prehispanic period, possibly in much the same way as other ancient Mesoamerican cultures, such as the Teotihuacan, did (Manzanilla 2011: 11).
Water Storage
Water was one of the elements kept under the control of the ruling classes, particularly in the dry season, as this was a substantial and essential element for both day-to-day life and for the construction of their cities. The natural location of the Maya area, subject to variable rainfall, with periods of heavy rain and the ready availability of water interspersed with drier periods and drought, forced the leaders to establish water collection and storage systems to ensure that this was employed and rationed in a suitable manner.
In this respect, when studying any Maya settlement of a certain size, it is possible to observe the different architectural elements employed to gather and store sufficient water to cover the daily and urban requirements of their populations. These range from the simplest domestic systems known as chultuns up to the ponds and water reservoirs found in the large lowland centers, such as Tikal, Nakum, Caracol, or Calakmul. On many occasions these were formed in natural depressions or hollows, but transformed and raised by dikes and dams built out of stone that served to keep reserves and to guarantee the conservation of rainwater to supply the city.
The construction of ponds and reservoirs increased considerably throughout the Classic period, and here the Maya needed to consider both the means of holding the water and, even more essentially, the means of collecting it. This was performed by studying natural water impoundments that were then raised and fed by channels that carried water to these reservoirs during periods of heavy rain. An extensive network of channels has been recorded in Tikal that fed seasonal rain to a series of reservoirs. These reservoirs were prepared and built in naturally suited areas or, on occasion, by taking advantage of artificial depressions left by quarries. In more elaborate cases the ponds or reservoirs were covered by stone, to provide better impoundment and improve the quality of the stored water. On some occasions secondary cisterns, in the form of chultuns, were built at these impoundments to serve as storage places during long periods of drought and when the reservoirs dried out.
Even though these artificial lakes may not be readily appreciated today as they are all dry, their presence was essential in the large cities where they were more highly developed and where they would similarly have played an important role as urban architectural elements, as is the case of the Palace Reservoir set between the Central Acropolis and Temple V at Tikal.
Other large natural impoundments of water were the cenote freshwater sinkholes in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula; these are enormous eroded depressions in the limestone bedrock where groundwater would gather. Important Maya settlements were built around these cenotes, and, in this respect, it is interesting to note that, according to Scarborough (1998, 145), the rulers gained control of this essential resource by ritually appropriating all day-to-day activities associated with water by the population under their rule, making use of sophisticated water rituals. The cenotes were subsequently held as sacred places.
The chultuns, to the contrary, are normally associated with residential structures, and it is frequent to find these excavated in the same platform that supports the dwellings. The openings to these chultun cisterns was surrounded by a sloping rendered area to allow rainwater to drain into them. These chultunes acted as complete water cisterns and were particularly abundant in the drier regions, such as the north of the Yucatan Peninsula (McAnany 1990; Vidal-Lorenzo 1999: 9–10, 26). Some of the most outstanding chultuns are those at the Sayil Palace; these serve as the main water supply source to the area as there was no cenote in the vicinity (Sabloff and Tourtellot 1992: 158).
It is believed that the chultuns found in the southern lowlands served additional purposes, such as storing grain, preparing fermented beverages (Dahlin and Litzinger 1986), or for ritual motives. Among these latter, we may refer to those on the island of Topoxté and surrounding areas in Petén; investigations here (Hermes and Calderón 2000) have revealed the presence of various types of chultun. One of the most outstanding of these is Chultun 7B-1 at Topoxté, a network of twelve underground chambers in which numerous burials and offerings were laid (Figure 12.3). On other occasions, the chultuns appear in open public spaces, such as causeways or plazas, perhaps for rituals or feasting purposes (Tourtellot, Everson, and Hammond 2003: 100) (Figure 12.4).
In other regions it was not possible to store water for domestic use in this way because of the uneven terrain. This is the case of some Preclassic settlements, such as Chocolá, in the southwest piedmont of Guatemala. There a complex arrangement of channels formed in rough slate and clay supplied rainwater for the domestic cisterns below primitive constructions, which allowed these cisterns to be supplied at times of heavy rainfall (Valdés-Gómez and Vidal-Lorenzo 2005: 43). Similar channels of the same period have been found at Kaminaljuyú and Takalik Abaj.
Figure 12.4 Drawing of the chultun discovered in the causeway of La Blanca, Petén (PLB 2011).
Palaces and the Storage of Luxury Goods and Other Tributes
Maya iconography has shown us the formal audiences that were held for the handing over of tribute and gifts to the Maya rulers. This all led to a hoard of valuable objects in the form of royal treasure that had to be stored away in safe and protected places. This would have required the use of a number of rooms in the palace buildings throughout the Classic period, though it has not yet been possible to ascertain the specific rooms used for these purposes within the palaces. The rooms closest to those where the audiences were held would have undoubtedly been the most convenient for these purposes, as would the more private rooms where entry was more strictly controlled in order to ensure the safekeeping of these valuable items.
One of the few examples that has been verified by archaeology is the east room of Structure M7–22, the “House of the Masks” at Aguateca (Houston and Inomata 2009: 298), the only room in the entire palace structure that contained numerous royal belongings (pyrite mirrors, bone and shell ornaments, ceramic masks, and so on). According to those who discovered the site, when King Tahn Te’K’inich was forced to abandon the palace, he stored all of these objects in this room and sealed the entrance, perhaps with the hope of returning to recover them.
The excavations made at the ancient city of Copán (Honduras) and, more precisely, those in the urban Sepulturas sector, show that certain “noble houses” were also employed as storehouses during the Classic period. This was the case of those at Group 9N-8 (Hendon 2009: 105–129), where excavators found ceramic vases of different sizes in a number of rooms containing materials of high economic and symbolic value in the process of production, such as pieces of shell (Hendon 2009). This may suggest the dual function of these areas as both workshop and storehouse. In this respect, we must assume that there were also areas allocated to the practice of the arts in the Maya palaces, and it would then have been necessary to safeguard the expensive raw materials required to this end—many of them brought along long trade routes—within these rooms.
One of the sites where remnants have been found of murals made with pigments imported from far off places is that of La Blanca (Vidal-Lorenzo and Muñoz-Cosme 2007), a settlement set in the basin of the Salsipuedes River, a tributary of the Mopán River, in the Petén department of Guatemala, close to the city of Ucanal and not far from cities such as Yaxhá, Nakum, or Naranjo (Figure 12.5). At the top of the La Blanca Acropolis there is a building in the form of a C opened out to the west, which encompasses a square courtyard thirty-eight meters wide, and another palace, named the East Palace, that closes off the courtyard to the east, providing three access points and leaving two side exits on either side of the palace.
Figure 12.5 Plan of the Acropolis of La Blanca (PLB 2013).
Figure 12.6 Plan and elevation of the Orient Palace (6J1) of La Blanca (PLB 2010).
The East Palace has five rooms and looks over the inner courtyard of the Acropolis, which formed the most important monumental complex at the site. People approached the main chamber from a large central door reached by a flight of steps. This was undoubtedly the governing palace of the city, and this enormous hall, with its spectacular vaulted ceiling more than four meters wide and seven meters long and reaching up to more than six meters at its highest point, would have been the formal area for royal audiences (Figure 12.6). Evidence of this appears in several high-quality graffiti that can still be observed on its walls (Vidal-Lorenzo and Muñoz-Cosme 2009).
On observing the great architectural display appearing in the design of the palace buildings of the Acropolis, with their large vaulted ceilings and spacious rooms six meters wide complete with large benches, it is then curious to note the two small rooms set at each side of the main chamber. These rooms are both around two meters wide and vaulted in a transverse direction to the centerline of the building and are approached by doors set off-center, the openings of which were set at right angles to the inner face of the façade. Inside the room, a bench takes up almost half the space. This then means that there are two smaller rooms, each around eight square meters, that can be entered only from the main chamber. This main chamber of the East Palace and the entire complex of the Acropolis would have been defended by guards who protected these architectural symbols of power and all the objects held within the Acropolis, even though the governor would have resided in another part of the compound. It is then reasonable to suggest that these small rooms set off the reception room would have been used to store valuable objects given to the governors as gifts or tribute, to which only the governors themselves and their closest assistants would have had access.
A number of similar cases may be seen at Tikal (see Smyth, Chapter 11, this volume), such as building 5D46, one of the largest palaces of Tikal and one of highly complex construction and scale, which similarly contains two rooms set off its north wing, or building 5D49 in the same Central Acropolis. The room at the southwest end of Building N at Nakum could also have been used for this same purpose. The small dimensions of these rooms and their total privacy and safety all appear to support this hypothesis, along with the fact that these are only to be found in palaces associated with those in power.
Finally, there is a very recent discovery made at Chilonché, a Maya settlement in the same archaeological region as La Blanca, where two storage places placed in the rear walls of Rooms 1S and 5S of 3E1, a multistoried palace on the top of the Acropolis with different building phases, were found (Muñoz-Cosme et al. 2014) (Figure 12.7).
Conclusion
In this chapter we have tried to delve further into certain aspects regarding the storage systems used in the Maya area on the basis of a series of questions that we have attempted to answer by resorting to archaeological, iconographic, literary, or ethnological sources. While we are aware that we have not been able to answer all of these questions fully, we now have a more complete view of this interesting subject, which has not been studied in depth in the archaeological literature. Given the general consensus that the structures to store food and other domestic items of the common population were always of a perishable nature, in the same manner as their dwellings, it is only through cases such as that of Joya de Cerén and other ethnographic studies that we may provide further information. Even so, further geochemical research on the room groups may provide additional data regarding the food products that were stored near the dwellings.
The water storage buildings, on the contrary, tend to be very well documented, and even though occasionally these may seem “invisible,” a detailed investigation of the archaeological sites could bring them back to life.
With regard to the proposal that elite property was stored within the palaces, it is still necessary to make a more intensive study of the uses and functions of the different rooms of the palace buildings, and particularly with respect to their use as either living quarters or for the formal and necessary functions of the rulers. It is clearly necessary to consider all the needs brought about by the exercise of power, as well as social and political representation, including those concerning storage. These may be revealed through the architectural spaces and rooms that we are able to identify in those palaces that were the focus of power during the Classic Maya period. In this respect it has to be taken into consideration that these palaces were subject to different renovations and occupations throughout their existence, and that it is then almost impossible to find this evidence of the past through archaeology, not even with respect to their last period of occupation, when the rooms seem to have been emptied. Aguateca may be an exception. It is therefore necessary to resort to other sources of information, such as iconography or literature. As such, when we contemplate scenes showing the exchange of gifts or tribute, such as those captured on the beautiful Maya polychrome ceramics, we have to consider that all of these objects (vases, jaguar skins, feathers, blankets, beans, cacao, and so on) had to be suitably and immediately stored away in rooms close to those where they were received (Figure 12.8).
Since Maya palaces are characterized by having numerous rooms of different size and access, some of these must have undoubtedly served to store the complicated headdresses, delicate costumes, cosmetics, and other paraphernalia used by the members of the elite in their ceremonies and rituals. These are represented on both polychrome vases and the extraordinary, though regrettably very few, mural paintings decorating the interior of these buildings. These palace complexes must also have contained areas assigned to libraries, archives, and the storage of musical instruments and weapons. This at least was the function assigned to certain rooms in the Aztec palaces (tecpan) as shown by their illustration in certain codices and other Nahua pictorial documents. One of the most striking of these is the palace of the prince and poet Nezahualcóyotl in Texcoco (Johansson 2002), as illustrated in the Map of Quinatzin, where the protagonist appears together with his son in the main room that leads on to the central courtyard (a square, sunken courtyard). This was where high-ranking personalities, the lords of the Acolhuacan’s royal council, were waiting. A number of rooms may be seen around this courtyard that appear to store objects that have been identified as being tribute, weapons, and musical instruments (Evans 2001: 242).
Figure 12.8 Painted vase that shows the handing over of tribute (blankets) to Maya ruler. Photo ©Justin Kerr, K8089 (www.mayavase.com).
It is possible to observe some conceptual similarities between that shown in the illustration of this palace and, by way of example, the palace complex at the Maya Acropolis of La Blanca, or recent discoveries at Chilonché, which reinforce our initial hypothesis that the Maya palaces also contained areas that served to store luxury and highly symbolic objects. In this way, the Maya palace may then be seen as both a place of residence of the elite and as a symbol of their wealth and prosperity.
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