1 TWENTY-FIVE (PLUS) YEARS OF SITE-PLANNING STUDIES

Brett A. Houk

In 1991, Wendy Ashmore published “Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya.” The
article, in which Ashmore defined “site planning” and proposed a template for Maya city design based on cardinal directions, is
currently the most cited article in the history of Latin American Antiquity, demonstrating its tremendous impact on the field of
Maya archaeology. The notion that the Maya created microcosms of their worldview—what other scholars later freely
interchanged with “cosmograms”—in their city plans is perhaps the most referenced element of her article. It, however, is only
one element of site planning as described by Ashmore. Her ideas and the influence they had on the field marshaled some
outspoken and prominent critics, in large part because of how scholars uncritically applied the cosmogram model as an
explanatory tool. This paper examines how the concept of site planning has been applied to Maya sites in Belize over the last
two and half decades and looks at problems and possibilities with the approach. Ultimately, site-planning studies, as originally
proposed by Ashmore, remain a viable method to investigating city planning among the ancient Maya.

Introduction follow up article with Jeremy Sabloff in 2002

In a number of publications in the late
1980s and early 1990s, Wendy Ashmore
advanced the idea that ancient Maya city
planners employed a set of planning principles
that were linked to cardinal directions and
Mesoamerican cosmological beliefs. Her 1991
article, entitled “Site-Planning Principles and
Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient
Maya,” has been in print for over 25 years, and,
as of April 2016, it was the most widely and
most frequently cited article in the history of
Latin American Antiquity (Figure 1). In it,
Ashmore (1991) proposed that many Maya cities
employed a particular site-planning template
based on cosmological principles. We could
actually look even farther back for the genesis of
this idea to 1986, when Ashmore (1986)
described “the use at Quirigua of site planning
principles derived from both local and distant
sources.” The template for building cities
emphasized the north-south axis of Maya cities
and the formal and functional opposition
between north and south. In this template, open
plazas, where community activities and public
rituals took place, characterize the northern end
of a site’s core, while enclosed private spaces
and elite palaces occupy the southern end. In
many cases, a ball court serves as an
architectural transition between north and south
(Ashmore 1989, 1991).
It is evident from the citation data alone
that the article has had tremendous impact on the
field of Maya archaeology, and Ashmore’s
(1991) concepts have been widely applied by
researchers working in Belize. She published a
that included the site of Xunantunich, located in
Belize, as an example of using a site-planning
approach to interpret civic planning. That
subsequent article, while not as frequently cited
as Ashmore’s 1991 piece, is still one of the most
frequently cited articles published by Latin
American Antiquity, averaging 6.8 citations per
year (see Figure 1). Ashmore’s approach,
however, is not without its critics, the most vocal
being Michael Smith (2003:221) who chided
Ashmore and Jeremy Sabloff on the pages of
Latin American Antiquity for relying “upon
assertions and subjective judgments backed not
by empirical evidence but by uncritical citations
of the works of others who agree with them.”
This paper examines site planning as
originally defined by Ashmore and look closely
at the subsequent fixation other authors have had
on cosmograms. It includes examples of how
researchers in Belize have applied Ashmore’s
model, and consider the critiques and criticisms
of the approach offered by Smith (2003, 2005),
before closing with examples of the three
successful types of site-planning analysis.
Site Planning as Defined by Ashmore
In a series of book chapters and articles
published between 1986 and 1992, Ashmore laid
out her definition of site planning. In a 1989
book chapter, she defined site planning as “the
deliberate, self-conscious aspect of settlement
patterning, at scales from individual structures
through regional landscapes” (Ashmore
1989:272). Nowhere in that definition do the
words cosmogram or cosmology appear;

Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, Vol. 14, 2017, pp. 3-11.

Copyright © 2017 by the Institute of Archaeology, NICH, Belize.
Twenty-five (plus) Years of Site-Planning Studies
Figure 1. Citation data for Ashmore (1991) and Ashmore
and Sabloff (2002). Top: total number of times cited up to
April 2016. Bottom: average citations per year up to April
2016. Data from publishorperish.com (Harzing 2007).
Ashmore’s (1989) definition of site planning is
holistic in that it does not attribute one single
source of site-planning ideas but encompasses a
wide range of possibilities. A key element of the
definition, however, is this notion of deliberate
and self-conscious aspects of settlement
planning. In other words, site planning reflects
the decisions of individual planners. Working
from the archaeological record back to those
decisions is the ultimate intent of studying site
planning—the goal is to determine why a site
looks the way it does. Ultimately then the intent
is to decipher meaning, broadly construed, from
the built environment.
Microcosms and Cosmograms
While Ashmore’s definition of site
planning allows for the fact that many different
factors can influence a city’s plans, her
publications have largely focused on deciphering
cosmological significance. In her 1989 book
chapter entitled “Construction and Cosmology:
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Politics and Ideology in Lowland Maya
Settlement Patterns,” Ashmore (1989:272)
argues that “by Classic times, Maya rulers
were…using principles of site planning based in
cosmology as a means to profess and reinforce
their membership in the political elite.” She
uses the term cosmogram in that chapter,
without ever defining it, but she is clearly
referring to what she calls microcosms in her
1991 Latin American Antiquity article:
“worldview maps, providing ever-present spatial
charts of the emic structure of social and
ideological relationships” (Ashmore 1991:199).
She notes that researchers have suggested “Maya
buildings and civic centers were laid out as
microcosms, arranging architecture so as to
symbolically equate the architectural center of
civic power with the center of the universe”
(Ashmore 1991:200).
As the title of her 1991 article suggests, an
important element of the site-planning template
she identified, referred to by others as the Petén
template (Houk 2015:265), is an apparent
concern with directionality. Ashmore
(1991:200) called it an “emphatic reference to a
north-south axis in site organization,” which was
combined with “formal and functional
complementarity or dualism between north and
south.” The template also includes a ball court
as a transitional element between the northern
and southern groups and causeways, which
connect the major elements of the city plan
(Ashmore 1991:200). The model also includes
“the addition of elements on east and west to
form a triangle with the north, and frequent
suppression of marking the southern position”
(Ashmore 1991:200), although this element of
the template is the most subjective to identify in
site maps. In her 1989 book chapter, Ashmore
(1989:274) commented on the dualistic nature of
the template, noting “the core of Maya centers
comprised complementary paired precincts, one
for public ritual, especially as devoted to
veneration of the ruler's lineage (e.g., through
location there of carved-stone dynastic
monuments), and the other, the private
residential compound or palace group of the
sovereign.”
The template becomes cosmogram once
the design elements are correlated to
cosmological concepts, including the ideas that

the heavens are the home of the ancestors and
associated with up, and the underworld, is the
location of the “primordial ordeals of
mythological Hero Twins,” and associated with
down (Ashmore 1991:201). Furthermore,
Ashmore (1991:201) proposed that in Maya
worldview, “north” equates to “up,” and the
natural world and the supernatural realms are
connected vertically through things like
mountains, caves, and the axis mundi. Another
element of worldview is the concept that the
world is divided into quarters, which correspond
to the cardinal directions, with a fifth, central
position. In applying these notions to the site-
planning template, Ashmore (1991:201)
suggested the northern group of architecture
equates to the heavens, which is the home of the
ancestors, and the southern group equates to the
underworld. Thus, she proposed that a king who
chose this site-planning template converted his
city into “a map of the universe, a microcosm,
with the ruler placed in a position of
consummate power” (Ashmore 1991:201). This
is exemplified in her analysis of the Late Classic
plan of Quirigua, which Ashmore (1989:279–
280) describes as follows:
The counterpart to [the] public, ritual, and
apotheosizing northern precinct is the enclosed,
residential, administrative, and worldly southern
compound of the Acropolis, home to Cauac Sky
and his household. Between these two elements
is a ball court…Other coeval monumental groups
at Quirigua further stress the dominance of the
north/ south axis; a north/open vs south/enclosed
contrast when such groups are juxtaposed; and,
in all monumental groups, regardless of degree
of openness, the association of northern position
with highest (i.e., most skyward) summit
elevation.
Applications in Belize
As the citation data described previously
indicates, Ashmore’s 1991 article has been
extremely influential, and a number of scholars
have applied Ashmore’s cosmological model to
landscapes, sites, structures, and features in
Belize. In some cases, the use of Ashmore’s
model is explicit, while in others it is implicit.
Xunantunich
Jason Yaeger (2003:132) and Angela
Keller (2006:590) analyzed the plan of
5
Houk
Xunantunich and concluded it is a cosmogram.
Yaeger (2003:132–133) proposes that the site
has a cruciform pattern created by the north–
south alignment of three contiguous plazas the
causeways and two causeways, which enter the
site core from east and west. Overall, the
cruciform design “recreates the quadripartite
Maya cosmos” (Yaeger 2003:133). Keller
(2006:586) concludes the cruciform layout of the
site core is “a clear, regular, and intentional
design.” Building on the cosmological concept
of vertical connections between the natural and
supernatural worlds, which is an element of
Ashmore’s (1991) model, Yaeger (2003:133)
and Keller (2006:591) both comment on the
Castillo’s central position in the city’s design.
Yaeger (2003:133) proposes that the Castillo
may represent “the World Tree” based on the
symbolism embedded in its stucco friezes and its
central position in the cosmogram.
Minanha
At Minanha on the Vaca Plateau, Gyles
Iannone (2010:363) noted that the site’s
epicenter “mimics the cosmologically-based
civic plan of more potent centers in that it
exhibits a strong north-south axis and follows
the pattern of placing the royal residential
compound . . . in the north, in association with
the heavens.” This, however, is not a strict
application of Ashmore’s (1991) model, but
rather an alternate interpretation of it.
Ashmore’s model places the ruler’s residential
compound in the south and the public-ritual
plaza in the north.
Southern Belize
Geoffrey Braswell and colleagues
(2011:117) apply Ashmore’s model to the ruins
in southern Belize. Braswell et al. (2011:117)
note in the case of Pusilhá:
As at many other Classic Maya sites, the
direction north is associated with the heavens,
ancestor worship, and the sun at noon. In
contrast, ballcourts are found at low elevations.
The largest ballcourt at Pusilhá is located at the
southern end of a sacbe. This probably reflects
an association with the underworld.
At Lubaantun, Braswell et al. (2011:117)
suggest a unique urban planning principle may
Twenty-five (plus) Years of Site-Planning Studies
be at work. Although cosmologically based, this
principle differs from Ashmore’s model. Based
on the arrangement of buildings and platforms,
they propose that three pyramidal platforms
form a small triangle and the site’s three ball
courts form a larger one. Harkening back to
elements of Ashmore’s pan-Mesoamerican
cosmological concepts, Braswell et al.
(2011:117) propose that the first three structures
“represent the three hearthstones of Maya
creation, thought to be in the constellation
Orion, and for that reason are the tallest
platforms built at the site.” The ball courts,
which “occupy a much lower position,” they
propose “are probably associated with the
underworld” (Braswell et al. 2011:117).
Braswell et al. (2011:117–118) further note:
This precise pattern of two inscribed triangles is
unique in the Maya world, but may serve to mark
Lubaantun as an ox te tun, or three stone place,
one of many in the Maya area. It is important to
note that if our interpretation of site planning
principles at Lubaantun is correct, this plan
probably emerged late in the construction history
of the site.
La Milpa
Taking the cosmogram concept to the
extreme, Tourtellot and colleagues (2003:48)
propose that “a vast physical cosmogram or
quincunx surrounds La Milpa Centre.” This is
actually one of two or three nested cosmograms
they identify at the site. The larger one consists
of the epicenter and minor centers found 3.5 km
from the center at each cardinal direction.
Within that larger cosmogram, the site core itself
“was converted into the Petén cosmogram”
following the construction of the southern
plazas; concurrently “a miniature and perhaps
original version of the cardinal cosmogram was
also inscribed on Plaza A with the insertion of
late structures” (Tourtellot et al. 2003:49). They
view the creation of the larger cosmogram as
part of a coordinated construction plan
conceived and imposed by the elite that
extended the ritual area of the city out to
encompass half of the settlement area (Tourtellot
et al. 2003:48–49). They interpret this action as
indicative of “a new governing model of the
universe that was not atavistic ancestor
6
veneration but [was] based on an encompassing
worldview” (Tourtellot et al. 2003:49).
Criticisms and Critiques
The year 2003, when Tourtellot and
colleagues published their La Milpa book
chapter, was a tipping point for cosmograms in
the Maya world. To quote Michael Smith
(2005:117):
In 2003, I published a comment (Smith 2003) on
a report by Wendy Ashmore and Jeremy Sabloff
(2002) in which I criticize their interpretations of
possible cosmological influences on Maya city
planning. At the time of writing (2002), I was
unaware of an impending explosion of
publications on Maya cosmology and city
planning the following year.
This explosion resulted in another Latin
American Antiquity article by Smith (2005:220)
in 2005 entitled, “Did the Maya Build
Architectural Cosmograms?,” in which he was
highly critical of what he called “the new
cosmogram studies,” noting that they often
begin “with the assumption that directional
cosmology must have been expressed in
architectural settings” and ultimately “assert
confidently that the building/compound/
city/reservoir/stelae in question formed a
cosmogram.” While Smith (2005:220) was
“flabbergasted” at some of the new cosmogram
studies “for presenting highly speculative
interpretations as if they were reasoned and
unproblematic conclusions based on empirical
evidence,” he was particularly critical of the La
Milpa example, mentioned above. He noted that
the authors described the cosmogram in the
present tense, and unwittingly revealed that
“Maya architectural cosmograms are modern
phenomena, invented by scholars to satisfy their
desire to reconstruct ancient cosmology from
fragmentary evidence” (Smith 2005:220). Smith
(2005:221) went so far as to say that the new
cosmogram studies “set a bad example by
suggesting to students and the public that poorly
grounded speculation can pass for acceptable
scholarship in our field.”
Central to Smith’s (2005:220) criticism of
the new cosmogram studies is the fact that there
are no “explicit statements in the ethnohistoric
or epigraphic sources for direct cosmological

influences on Mesoamerican architecture or
urbanism.” Among other cultures around the
world, such as in India, China, and Cambodia,
ancient texts actually describe the layout of the
ideal city and report that rulers employed
cosmological models in designing their royal
capitals (Smith 2003:222). Lacking similar lines
of evidence for the Maya, Smith (2003:220)
warns scholars to “approach this question
cautiously with rigorous and explicit methods.”
He does, however, note that “cosmology may
have played a role in architectural symbolism
and perhaps even in the design and layout of
buildings and cities” in his 2005 article (Smith
2005:220), and in his comment on Ashmore’s
and Sabloff’s (2002) article he agrees “that
cosmology must have played a role in generating
the layouts of cities among the Maya” (Smith
2003:221).
The Utility of Site-Planning Studies
What then is the utility of studying site
planning? Without written records that tell us the
ancient Maya encoded cosmological models into
their city designs, is it pointless to attempt to
study high-level meaning in layouts of Maya
cities, when even the approach’s most outspoken
critic, Michael Smith (2003, 2005), noted it was
possible and even likely that cosmology played a
role?
As described below, site-planning studies
can provide useful information without wading
into the realm of “poorly grounded speculation”
(e.g., Smith 2005:221). In particular, the
approach has utility in pattern recognition,
detecting when symbolic communication has
taken place, and identifying potential political or
social relationships between sites.
Pattern Recognition
Maya cities were built using a common
architectural inventory (plazas, temples, ball
courts, etc.), “but the choice of specific
components varies from place to place and
through time” (Ashmore and Sabloff 2002:204).
The choice of components was important, but
how those components were arranged is equally
important, because “common spatial patterns at
a series of cities provides stronger evidence for
urban planning than architectural inventories”
(Smith 2007:26). Site-planning analysis is, at its
7
Houk
core, about recognizing patterns at multiple
archaeological sites.
Smith (2003), in his original assault on
site-planning studies, challenged a fundamental
component of Ashmore’s (1991) template—the
pronounced north-south axis in Maya cities—
questioning whether or not it is even an
empirical pattern. A recent study of 14 Maya
cities in Belize tested this question and
concluded that “One of the most consistent
features of the epicenters of the sites in [the]
sample is that their monumental cores are
oriented north-south or, in the case of dispersed
epicenters, trend toward north–south orientation
of individual groups” (Houk 2015:260). In all
14 cases, the plazas or linked groups of plazas
that constitute the majority of the site core are
aligned generally north-south (Figure 2). This is
not to say that all the cities share the same
orientation, but, as Figure 3 demonstrates, the
majority of the site axes fall within 22.5 degrees
of north. This supports Ashmore’s and Sabloff’s
(2003:230–231) assertion “that disposition of
prominent construction along a north-south line
does dominate parts or all of many Maya civic
precincts in Classic times.”
Although the data set in the cited study is
small, it does include the largest sites in the five
geographic sub-regions of Belize (Houk
2015:235) and suggests the pattern of north-
south city orientation recognized by Ashmore is
a valid observation for the Late Classic period
for the eastern lowlands. The answer then to the
question Smith (2003:223–224) asked in 2003,
“Is the north-south axis an empirical
phenomenon?,” is yes based on these data.
What the pattern indicates, however, is open to
debate, and the question Smith (2005:217) asked
in 2005, “Did the Maya build architectural
cosmograms?,” is much more challenging to
answer.
Symbolic Communication
In a Latin American Antiquity article
published in 2011, Houk and Zaro (2011) waded
into the site-planning debate, acknowledging
that “Maya archaeologists have been too quick
to impose cosmograms on buildings and sites
using less than rigorous methods, and they have
often failed to recognize competing alternative
explanations for architectural designs and urban
Twenty-five (plus) Years of Site-Planning Studies
Figure 2. Simplified site plans used to calculate
orientation, after Houk (2015:Figure 10.3). See Houk
(2015:259–260) for discussion of methods used in
calculations.
plans in ancient Maya settlement” (Houk and
Zaro 2011:180). The article concludes that the
city planners at La Milpa embedded high-level
meaning in two distinct but related caches
through a practice dubbed “ritual engineering”
(Houk and Zaro 2011). The caches functioned
as both dedicatory offerings for an associated
building and altar, and also existed as part of a
larger, ritually engineered landscape. This
echoes earlier thinking by Diane Chase and
Arlen Chase (1998:326) who noted, “offerings
are not merely activities undertaken secondarily
to define physical constructions. Not only do
ritual offerings help to define architectural
space, but they…may be incorporated into
buildings by design and before construction.”
As a site-planning study, the work responded to
a call by Ashmore and Sabloff (2003:233) for
archaeologists to “recognize when symbolic
communication has taken place.” The two
8
Figure 3. Radar chart showing the number of site
orientations per 11.25-degree interval. Although 14 sites
are included in the data, several sites have two different
orientations, resulting in 22 data points. Chart prepared by
Adrian Chase.
caches carried a political statement about royal
involvement in the planning process, but they
also conveyed additional symbolic meaning that
is unclear. However, even though their meaning
is unknown, a site-planning perspective allowed
the researchers to recognize that communication
related to political and cosmological symbolism
had occurred and was a deliberately engineered
component of the royal precinct plan at La Milpa
(Houk and Zaro 2011:196).
Relationships Between Sites
An outgrowth of Ashmore’s original work
is the emphasis on political emulation that she
and Jeremy Sabloff posited in their 2002 Latin
American Antiquity article entitled “Spatial
Orders in Maya Civic Plans.” Ashmore’s and
Sabloff’s (2002:202) stated their central
argument as follows:
Our most fundamental guiding assumption is that
the position and arrangement of civic
construction was anything but random. From
that base, we assert that the spatial expressions of
Maya cosmology and of Maya politics
constituted the most prominent ideational
foundations for planning, and acknowledge that
many factors have affected the clarity with which
such foundations may be discerned today from
archaeological site plans.

Ashmore explored the former idea in her
earlier work. The latter idea, that of political
emulation, is based on the notion that rulers of
cities expressed their affiliation with
commissioners of similar projects and their
political authority by directing monumental
constructions that replicated powerful sites
(Ashmore and Sabloff 2002). In their article,
Ashmore and Sabloff (2002:207) propose that
the rulers at Xunantunich, in western Belize,
emulated the plan of Naranjo in their Late
Classic design of the city. In a second example,
Ashmore and Sabloff (2002:207–208) compare
the civic plan of Labná to its larger neighbor,
Sayil. Similarities between the two sites include
causeways joining residential palaces in the
north to nonresidential complexes in the south.
Despite differences between the two plans,
Ashmore and Sabloff (2002:208) conclude the
“orientations of the principal buildings at each
end of the causeway are similar at the two
centers, and . . . the observed buildings and
spaces are broadly parallel in form and array,”
and that “comparison of spatial order in the two
places yields clues to political dynamics of
founding order and hierarchical relations.”
The argument for political emulation can
be extended great distances. For example,
Ashmore and Sabloff (2002:207–208) propose
that both Xunantunich and Naranjo emulate the
older and more powerful city of Calakmul.
They argue that the “rulers at the younger cities
drew on both directional and emulation
strategies to enfold their nascent civic and ritual
centers in a mantle of longstanding authority”
(Ashmore and Sabloff 2002:207–208). While
we do not understand how the Maya shared or
transmitted planning or engineering knowledge
between cities, it is safe to assume the jobs of
architect and engineer were elite vocations. It is
not difficult to imagine kings of affiliated
kingdoms, with an architect in tow, visiting
Tikal or Calakmul for major political or
religious ceremonies, and returning with new
architectural concepts and a desire to emulate a
distant center of power.
Obviously, arguments for political
emulation are stronger if there are other lines
artifactual or textual lines of evidence
connecting two sites; such is the case for
Naranjo and Xunantunich (Houk 2015:276). In
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Houk
cases without textual linkages, similarities in
plans between nearby sites may reveal political
or social connections. In the case of most Maya
cities, the planners probably never went very far
from home for inspiration. In this way, unusual
or rare arrangements of civic architecture that
show up at nearby centers may be evidence for
affiliation (Houk 2015:277). An obvious
example is southern Belize, where rulers clearly
shared ideas about how to build their
settlements.
Southern Belize, which is geographically
isolated and physiographically different than
much of the rest of Belize, makes an excellent
laboratory in which to examine shared concepts
of civic planning. Richard Leventhal (1990)
noted similarities between sites and called
southern Belize as “an ancient Maya region.”
His work, previous research by Hammond
(1975), and more recent investigations reported
by Geoff Braswell and Keith Prufer (2009)
reveal a high level of homogeneity among the
four major southern Belize sites. The ball courts
at Nim Li Punit, Pusilhá, and Lubaantun are
walled enclosures and “are centrally located and
mediate between two sections of the different
sites” (Leventhal 1990:138). In all cases, the
architects used the natural landscape to enhance
the monumentality of their structures, and they
made do without vaulted architecture (Leventhal
1990; Braswell and Prufer 2009:45).
Furthermore, three of the four cities contain high
numbers of stelae, displayed in small, intimate
plazas (Leventhal 1990). The stela plazas at
Nim Li Punit, Pusilhá, and Uxbenka account for
only 7.9 percent, 5 percent, and 5.4 percent of
the monumental area at their sites, respectively
(Houk 2015:Table 10.2). In all cases, the cities
of southern Belize are more similar to one
another than they are to cities outside of the
region.
La Milpa provides a fascinating contrast
to the southern cities. It has a comparable
number of stelae, with 23, and 17 come from the
Great Plaza (Houk 2015:172). Although one
could refer to the Great Plaza as a stela plaza, at
nearly 18,000 m2 it is radically larger than its
southern Belize counterparts, and accounts for
21.6 percent of the monumental area at the site
(houk 2015:Table 10.2). In fact, the three stela
plazas from Nim Li Punit, Pusilhá, and Uxbenka
Twenty-five (plus) Years of Site-Planning Studies

could all fit in the Great Plaza at La Milpa and

there would still be 11,000 m2 of space left over
(Houk 2015:240). Large plazas are not unique
to La Milpa; in fact, Dos Hombres, Chan Chich,
and El Pilar all have plazas covering more than
11,500 m2. And, if we were to consider
Xunantunich’s plan before Structure A-1 was
built late in the city’s history, the original main
plaza would have covered nearly 10,000m2.
The La Milpa plaza example demonstrates
that shared concepts of city planning can be
identified in areas that are not geographically
isolated, as is the case with southern Belize.
These massive plazas seem to be a shared
concept of city building in western and
northwestern Belize, but clearly other competing
influences played into the design of these cities.
For example, La Milpa, Dos Hombres (Figure
4), Chan Chich, and Xunantunich are all
moderate to good fits for Ashmore’s Petén Figure 4. Map of Dos Hombres, after Houk (2015:Figure
template, with open public plazas at the north 8.6).
and restricted acropolis at the south (Houk
2015:272). El Pilar, despite its pronounced Conclusions
north-south orientation, is not a good fit, Hopefully, the examples provided here
however, as the pattern is flipped: the public demonstrate the utility of site-planning analysis
plaza is at the south and the elite acropolis is at in pattern recognition, detecting when symbolic
the north (Houk 2015:272). communication has taken place, and identifying
Cutting across the geographic range of potential political or social relationships between
cities with massive main plazas is another sites. While the ultimate goal of most site-
planning concept: east-west radial causeways. planning studies is to search for “meaning” in
El Pilar, Xunantunich, and Chan Chich all have the design of a city, Ashmore’s and Sabloff’s
one or more causeways extending east to west (2002:202) admonition “to establish the mix of
from their main plazas and each has at least one ideational, social, environmental, economic,
causeway lined by parapets (Houk 2015:259). engineering, historical, and other sources in
The use of parapets may be a trait borrowed observed architectural forms and arrangements”
from the style center of Tikal, where it is calls for a broader consideration of site-planning
common (Houk 2015:277); several of Caracol’s influences. “Meaning,” while it may include a
many causeways are also parapet lined (Chase cosmological message, it is also about
and Chase 2001:273). understanding the historical trajectory of an
These examples suggest possible political urban landscape and the myriad decisions and
or social ties between cities, and the overlapping agendas that may have affected it. Site-planning
distributions suggest these ties may have been studies, which Ashmore’s (1991) article
rather complicated and/or dynamic. We know, continues to influence over 25 years after it was
for example, that Xunantunich’s political published, remain a viable approach to
relationship with Naranjo shifted several times investigating Maya settlements and encourage
during the Late Classic period (LeCount and researchers to consider factors, relationships,
Yaeger 2010), so it is easy to imagine similar and influences they may have otherwise
changes between the other cities in these discounted in their analysis of ancient urban
examples over the course of one or two planning.
centuries.

10

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