Witzinah
Witzinah , also spelled Huitzinah, is a small archaeological site of the Mayan culture in the Mexican state of Yucatán , around 11 km south of the town of Catmis. Witzinah was not known until the 1970s. It is located in an area with dense highlands on the edge of the ejido of the same name .
Noteworthy is Witzinah, where no archaeological excavations or restorations have taken place so far, due to the architecture that is unusual for this region. The site is not officially accessible. Witzinah is on the eastern edge of the area where the Puuc style otherwise dominates. For this region, which is hardly known archaeologically, several sites with an architecture related to the Chenes style or even the Rio Bec style are described.
Building 1
This badly damaged building with a total of four rooms in an L-shaped arrangement lies on a steep, high pyramid at the edge of a free space on the surface of the pyramid. In the upper wall area, the facades on the rear side show a continuous sequence of large volutes in several rows , which are formed from large stones that originally formed the basis for a stucco decoration. George F. Andrews sees in these volutes parts of oversized zoomorphic masks, such as those more common in the Chenes and Río-Bec styles. Unlike there, the masks do not appear on the main facade (it is destroyed), but on the back and therefore not above the doorways. This seems to indicate that the masks had lost their real meaning here and have become a decorative element that can be repeated at will.
Building 4
A long building with five rooms, oriented to the south. The middle room jumps slightly in front of the facade and, judging by the rear facade, should have been almost 1 m higher than the remaining rooms. The protrusion is compensated for on the back by an unusually thick back wall. A narrow staircase runs through it, which originally presumably led to the roof level - a feature often encountered in the Río Bec style. Only on the rear facade are small remnants of the decoration in the area of the central room. Several stones protrude from the upper wall surface, which originally carried figures and other elements made of stucco.
Coordinates: 19 ° 52 ′ 8 ″ N , 88 ° 58 ′ 55 ″ W.
Individual evidence
- ↑ George F. Andrews: Recent discoveries at two archaeological sites in Mexico . In George F. Andrews: Pyramids and Palaces, monsters and Masks. Labyrinthos, Lancaster CA 1997, ISBN 0-911437-34-7 , vol. 2, pp. 189-206.