Rio Bec style
The Rio Bec style is a Maya architectural style from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica . The architectural style can be assigned to several former Mayan cities in the central Yucatán in the Mexican state of Campeche .
Characteristic of the Rio-Bec style are false towers and false staircases, which are only used for decoration and are not accessible. In the representative buildings, the central entrances are often designed as snake-mouth entrances, which are intended to give the impression that one can enter the building through the open mouth of a huge reptile. The details of the depiction of the snake's mouth are highly conventionalized and their meaning is not easy to see. The facades show only a few portraits of people, but mainly geometric shapes such as squares, crosses and diamonds as decorations. Hieroglyphic inscriptions are known only on a few, poorly preserved monuments .
In terms of time, the Rio Bec style can be classified in the late classical period (approx. 600–900 AD). So far, about two dozen former Mayan cities can be ascribed to the Rio Bec style, the most famous of which are Calakmul , Kohunlich , Xpuhil , Becán , Chicanná , Río Bec and Hormiguero , all of which are accessible. Other places that have so far only been superficially investigated and not accessible to tourism are, among others, Channá, Pechal, La Muralla, Peor es Nada, Payán, Pasión del Cristo, Okolhuitz, Ramonal, Culucbalom.
For a list of the diagnostic features of the Río Bec style compared to the Chenes and Puuc styles, see Puuc .
literature
- Karl Ruppert , John H. Denison, Jr .: Archaeological reconaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Peten , Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington 1943