MODULE II

ART 104- HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE-1

Faculty: Prof. Rahna Abubaker

Department of Architecture, TKMCE, Kollam

 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

Maya Architecture is best characterized by the

soaring pyramid temples and ornate palaces which were built in all
Maya centres across Mesoamerica from El Tajin in the north
to Copan in the south.

Features of Maya architecture:

- multi-level elevated platforms
- massive step-pyramids
- corbelled roofing
- monumental stairways
- Exteriors were decorated with sculpture and mouldings of Maya
glyphs, geometric shapes, and iconography from religion such as
serpent masks.
- Maya architecture makes no particular distinction between Temple I, Tikal 2
religious and non-religious buildings.
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

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 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

Eg: Kaminaljuyu
Kaminaljuyu, an early Mayan site, is situated just outside
Guatemala City.

The site, dates back to the pre-Classic period (800 BCE-

300 CE).

Originally consisted of more than one hundred platforms

and mounds distributed over an area of 5 square
kilometers and organized around plazas that opened off
wide avenues.

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 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

Eg: El Mirador
El Mirador was an early Mayan city that reached its
cultural high point between 150 BCE and 150 CE.

The city was spread out over an area of 16 square

kilometers

The center of the city was a crowded constellation of

sacred and secular buildings.

Here the platforms have been built up successively over

time, comprising the largest set of platforms found
anywhere in the Mayan world.
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 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

Eg: El Tigre
The entire site of El Mirador was dominated by the so-called El
Tigre, a gigantic building complex covering 5.6 hectares.

It exhibited the emerging Mayan typology of the triple summit

structures.

These generally consisted of a steep platform mountain having at

its summit two smaller buildings facing each other in front of an
axially placed stepped pyramid temple.

Archaeologists believed that this arrangement represented the

three stars in the constellation of Orion
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 A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MAYAN ARCHITECTURE

Eg: Temple of The Jaguar, Tikal

built in around 732 AD

nine steep sloping tiers representing the nine levels of the

underworld

temple has a height of 37 metres above the spacious central plaza

below.

topped with a triple chamber temple and majestic roof comb.

The roof comb on the Temple of the Jaguar featured an image of

the king flanked by scrolls and serpents.
Temple I, Tikal 7
 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Early Indus Settlements (3500 BCE)

Settled cultures began to emerge around 7000
BCE in the eastern hills of the Baluchistan
Mountains in today’s Pakistan.

It was an agro-pastoral environment, allowing

farming in the flat lands of the Indus River
valley and herding and hunting in the hills and
mountains.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

The Baluchistan cultures did not develop ritual

sites, nor did they practice ancestral burial
cults.

This is perhaps because the people of the Indus

River valley were among the first to develop
concentrated proto-urban environments in
which one’s identity derived more from social
structure and craft and less from family lineage
or affiliation with a particular god or deity.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Mehrgarh
This area was strategically located overlooking the Kachi Plain
southeast of modern Quetta near the Bolan Pass, an important
gateway connecting South Asia to the rest of the continent.

The 5000 year history shows the development of the area from a
village to a regional trading centre.

At the peak of its development, it covered an area of 200

hectares.

By 3500 BCE, its occupants had not only mastered extensive

grain cultivation, but they had made it the center of their culture.
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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Mehrgarh
Dominating the urban landscape were square mud-brick
buildings, presumed to be granaries designed as multi-
roomed, rectangular structures with a long narrow corridor
running more or less down the center.

The absence of doors suggests that grain was fed from the
top.

The presence of these granaries connotes a centralized social

organization

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Outside one such granary, along its western wall, a Life, in other words, was organized around the
large hearth has been found, complete with several granaries.
hundred charred grains.

Along the southern wall, archaeologists found the The granaries were also the center of ritual
remains of the stone tools and drills of a steatite- mortuary practices: human bones, presumably those
or soapstone- cutter’s workshop. of priests, were found buried in its corridors and
intermediary spaces.
On the eastern side, there were heaps of animal
bones mixed with ashes, indicating the presence of
intense butchering activity.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

The Indus Ghaggar-Hakra Civilization (2500 BCE)

Around 2500 BCE, the Mehrgarh people moved down from
the Baluchistan Hills and settled in the river valleys that
define the eastern edge of the South Asian subcontinent
— those of the Indus and the now dried-up Ghaggar-Hakra
rivers.

The Indus/Ghaggar-Hakra region was the first urban

civilization, consisting of over a thousand cities and towns,
spread over a quarter of a million square miles, an area
roughly equivalent to modern-day France.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Trade
The Indus civilization was part of an interconnected
zone that extended across western Asia and even into
Egypt.

Ships carried bricks, beads, lumber, metals, and lapis

lazuli up the Persian Gulf to the cities of Mesopotamia.

The area between Mesopotamia and the Indus was also

urbanized with cities such as Tepe Yaha and Jiroft, in
the once fertile and expansive Soghun Valley.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Floods A central drain under the main gate of Harappa

Bricks were used to construct huge platforms over still stands in place.
existing mounds to make the bases for the cities.
Large-scale standardized burnt-brick production was Nonetheless, the Indus flooded many times, each
key. flood burying the city under a thick layer of silt.

Walls were erected in part for defensive reasons but Harappa was rebuilt at the same spot more than
also to keep out floodwaters. seven times. It is thought to have had a population
of about fifty thousand.
And most importantly, elaborate interconnected
drainage systems were designed to disperse storm
waters.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Cities and layouts

The largest cities were affiliated with outlying smaller Burials were often under mounds just outside the
cities. There were also specialized cities, such a ports city.
and mining towns.
Road networks were rectilinear.
The largest cities were divided into an upper town,
which was on the highest ground and had large Though these cities clearly had a social hierarchy
palaces, exclusive walls, and ceremonial spaces, and with a strong ruling class, there is little evidence
a lower town, which had most of the housing. of a centralized kingship.

The upper town usually had its own wall within the
general wall that surrounded the whole city.

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INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

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Religion: Decline of civilization:

There are no large temples, castles, or palaces. Early in the second millennium BCE, the Ghaggar-
Hakra begun to dry up.
As to their religious system, terra- cotta seals show a
plethora of supernatural animals — in particular The reasons are debated, but it seems an
unicorns. earthquake in the Himalayas caused one of its
major tributaries to change course and drain into
the Indus, depleting the Ghaggar- Hakra.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

MOHENJO-DARO
Mohenjo-Daro was the dominant city of the southern
Indus.

Neighborhoods:
Mohenjo-Daro’s neighborhoods were inward looking. The
main streets were lined with the largely blank walls of
houses, and even the secondary streets usually did not The larger houses often had two stories, the upper
have any major houses opening directly onto them. level built of wood.

Accessible by alleys only, the houses were most often The number of rooms in houses varied from two to
faced into open courtyards more than twenty.

A good number of the rooms contained wells, and

the larger ones had bathrooms and toilets. 19
 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

MOHENJO-DARO

Drainage:
To guard against the floods, the two largest building areas of
Mohenjo-Daro were raised high on a platform of bricks designed
to disperse the floodwaters through a series of culverts.

Under the main streets were drains running to settling tanks,

which could be accessed and cleaned.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

MOHENJO-DARO

The Great Bath:

Located at the intersection of the major north-south and east-west
streets, the Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro was the social center of the
city.

Its 12-by-7-meter pool, which was 3 meters deep, was accessed by

means of symmetrical stairs on the north and south.

The bath is surrounded by a narrow deep- water channel, and an

outlet from one corner of the bath leads to a high-corbelled drain
that eventually empties out into the surrounding lowlands.
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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Burnt bricks lined the pool, while a layer of Ritual urns with ashes — presumably of
bitumen waterproofed it. important people — were found close to the
entrance.
It was surrounded by a brick colonnade, behind
which were a series of rooms of various sizes. The very presence of the Great Bath indicates the
dominance of water and bathing in the
The whole structure had a wooden second story, inhabitants’ ideology.
although the central pool courtyard was probably
open to the sky.

Access was carefully controlled, with only one

opening from the south.

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 INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

HARAPPA
The excavations revealed that Harappa was
similar in plan to Mohenjo-Daro, with
a citadel resting on a raised area on the western
flank of the town and a grid-plan layout of
workers’ quarters on the eastern flank.

The citadel was fortified by a tall mud-brick Between the citadel and the Ravi River there
rampart that had rectangular salients, existed barrack like blocks of workers’ quarters,
or bastions, placed at frequent intervals. along with a series of circular brick floors that
were used for pounding grain and two rows of
ventilated granary buildings, 12 in all, arranged
around a podium.
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HARAPPA
The total floor space of the granaries was more
than 9,000 square feet approximating closely that
of the Mohenjo-Daro granary in its original form.

The entire layout, dominated by the citadel as it

was, suggests the close administrative control of
the food supplies within convenient proximity to
the river-highway of the Ravi.

However, no intelligible remains survive of the

buildings of the citadel or of the main body of the
town itself.
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