Chichén Itzá: Yucatán’s Great Capital

In the flat, dry interior of the northern Yucatán Peninsula, a few kilometers from the modern town of Tinum in the Mexican state of Yucatán, lies the great city of Chichén Itzá — the most visited Maya archaeological site in the world. The ruins draw more than two million visitors a year to their famous Pyramid of Kukulkan (popularly El Castillo), the Temple of the Warriors, the Great Ball Court, the Cenote of Sacrifice, and the Observatory known as the Caracol. The site’s history is unusually long and unusually complicated, with two distinct building traditions superimposed on the same civic core, and a public history of 1,200 years of intermittent occupation. It is also the site that has most divided the modern literature, with a debate that has run for more than a century over whether its central architecture is Maya, Toltec, or a hybrid of the two. That debate is laid out in is Chichén Itzá Maya or Toltec.

For the broader context, see the overview on major Maya cities and archaeological sites. For the cultural background of the post-Classic period, see the post-Classic period transformation and change, and the broader treatment of Maya religion, mythology, and cosmology which explains the deity framework.

Setting and natural environment

The northern Yucatán is a flat limestone shelf with no surface rivers. Rainwater percolates quickly through the karst, and the only natural sources of water are the great cenotes — sinkholes in the limestone with deep underground water — that give the region its distinctive hydrology. The two cenotes that gave Chichén Itzá its name lie at the heart of the site: the Cenote of Sacrifice (also called the Sacred Cenote or Cenote Xtoloc-adjacent), the larger of the two, and a smaller cenote inside the civic core. The site name is usually translated “at the mouth of the well of the Itzá,” after the Itzá Maya lineage that held the city in the Late Postclassic. The cenotes supplied not only drinking water but also a sacred threshold: the Maya underworld, Xibalba, was thought to be accessible through the great sinkholes, and offerings to the rain god Chaac were cast into the water for centuries. The wider symbolic role of the cenote is discussed in Maya rituals, bloodletting, and sacrifice.

A two-phase city

The first major construction at Chichén Itzá dates to the Late Classic (c. 600–800 CE), and corresponds to what scholars call the “Maya” or “Early” phase of the site. This is the period of the carved monuments of the Initial Series Group (a small platform in the central precinct with three stelae dated to the 6th and 7th centuries CE), and the so-called Old Castle (El Castillo viejo) — a temple pyramid in the southern plaza that was later encased inside the larger later structure.

The second, “Florescent” or “Toltec” phase of the city began in the late 9th century CE and continued through the 11th and 12th centuries, when the public architecture of the city was substantially rebuilt in a style that incorporates many features associated with the central Mexican highlands, especially the city of Tula in the modern state of Hidalgo. The political and cultural background is in is Chichén Itzá Maya or Toltec, and the broader question of the connections between the Maya and central Mexico is surveyed in the history of the Maya civilization.

El Castillo and the Pyramid of Kukulkan

The dominant monument of the site is the Pyramid of Kukulkan, popularly El Castillo. The pyramid is a stepped, four-sided structure about 30 meters tall, with nine terraced platforms and a stairway on each of its four sides. The number of platforms, the number of steps on each stairway (91), and the total — 365 — correspond to the 365 days of the haab, the Maya solar year. The pyramid is built around an earlier, smaller temple of the Late Classic that was encased in the new construction.

The most famous architectural feature of the pyramid is the phenomenon that occurs at the spring and autumn equinoxes: as the sun sets, the corner of the pyramid’s northwest balustrade casts a shadow on the western balustrade of the northern stairway, producing a serpentine undulation that has been interpreted as the descent of the Feathered Serpent Kukulkan to the earth. The phenomenon is augmented by carved serpent heads at the base of the balustrade, into which the shadow flows. The equinox effect is treated in the broader context of Maya astronomy, stars, planets, and eclipses and Maya astronomical cycles and observations.

The interior of the pyramid contains a temple of great refinement, with a red jaguar throne and a Chacmool statue. The Chacmool — a recumbent figure with the head turned 90 degrees from the body, holding a bowl on its belly to receive offerings — is one of the signature sculptures of the central Mexican tradition, and a small but striking set of examples is found at Chichén Itzá. The Chacmool form is read in the broader context of Maya religion, mythology, and cosmology.

The Great Ball Court

Just north of El Castillo stands the Gran Juego de Pelota (Great Ball Court), the largest and most impressive ballcourt in Mesoamerica at 168 meters long and 70 meters wide. The court is built in the standard Mesoamerican I-shape, with two parallel masonry benches supporting sloped playing alleys, capped at each end by a high stone ring mounted high on the wall through which the players had to drive a heavy rubber ball. The court is flanked by temples and decorated with reliefs depicting the decapitation of a player and the ball’s trajectory as a sun-eclipsing event.

The ballgame itself is one of the most deeply rooted rituals of ancient Mesoamerica, played throughout the region for more than two thousand years. Its political, religious, and athletic dimensions are surveyed in warfare, captives, and human sacrifice and in the Maya society, politics, and daily life pillar.

The Cenote of Sacrifice

The Cenote of Sacrifice lies about 300 meters north of the civic center, a circular sinkhole about 60 meters in diameter and 35 meters deep, with vertical limestone walls. From the Late Classic onward, the cenote was a destination of ritual offerings to the rain god. Thousands of objects have been recovered from its waters and bed, including jade, gold, copper, Spondylus shell, ceramics, the famous parry sticks of the ballgame, and (eventually, by 2000) the remains of at least 127 individuals.

The first systematic excavation of the cenote was carried out between 1904 and 1907 by the American consul and amateur archaeologist Edward H. Thompson on behalf of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Thompson’s dredging recovered thousands of artifacts and created a famous legal dispute with the Mexican government that lasted more than 70 years and was the subject of a 1943 US Supreme Court case, United States v. Mexico. The legal, political, and archaeological history is one of the most colorful chapters in the modern historiography of Maya archaeology; a summary is in the history of the Maya civilization pillar.

The Temple of the Warriors and the Group of the Thousand Columns

North of the Great Ball Court stands the Temple of the Warriors, a stepped pyramid crowned with a roofed temple supported by a forest of carved columns. The temple takes its name from the bas-reliefs of warriors lining its outer walls, depicting armed processions, captives, and scenes of ritual. The temple is approached from the south by a great plaza lined on three sides by the Group of the Thousand Columns — a series of round columns that originally supported a vast peristyle roof. Most of the columns are plain, but some carry reliefs of warriors, eagles, and jaguars; the columned hall was probably used for public ceremonies and the reception of foreign embassies.

The iconography of the warriors is closely related to that of central Mexico, with the same emphasis on the eagle and jaguar warrior orders of Tula; the cultural interpretation is the subject of is Chichén Itzá Maya or Toltec. The place of the warrior orders in Maya political life is in warfare, captives, and human sacrifice.

The Observatory (El Caracol)

The small, round building known as El Caracol (“the snail”) sits on a low platform above the southern plaza. The building takes its name from the interior spiral staircase that gave the original Spanish observers the impression of a snail shell. The structure is best known as an astronomical observatory, with windows and doorways aligned to the setting positions of Venus and to other important astronomical events.

The alignments have been studied in detail by modern astronomers; the Caracol Venus watch has been interpreted as a major observatory for the tracking of the cycles of the planet, which the Maya associated with the god K’awiil. The building is in the wider context of Maya astronomy, stars, planets, and eclipses and Maya astronomical cycles and observations.

The Sacred Cenote offerings

The Cenote of Sacrifice yielded a remarkable corpus of offerings, much of it now in the Yucatán Regional Museum (“Gran Museo del Mundo Maya”) in Mérida, in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, and in the Peabody Museum at Harvard. The ceramics and metals show evidence of long-distance trade connections: goldwork from Oaxaca and Central America, Mixtec-style jewelry, copper bells of central Mexican style, and Maya Blue-painted censers and effigy vessels.

The great debate is over whether the human remains — many of them children and young adults, with clear signs of perimortem trauma — represent the ritual sacrifice of captives and pilgrims, the ordinary burials of a sacred place, or some combination of both. Recent work by the INAH project Proyecto Cenote Sagrado, led by Ramón Carrasco Vargas between 1995 and 2000, and by the more recent Cenote de las Calaveras project, has begun to refine the chronology. The iconography of Cenote sacrifice is read in Maya rituals, bloodletting, and sacrifice.

Rediscovery and modern archaeology

Chichén Itzá was described in detail by the Spanish friar Bernardo de Lizana in the early 17th century, and the site was visited briefly by the American traveler John Lloyd Stephens and his artist Frederick Catherwood in 1842–1843. The first modern excavation was carried out in the 1880s by the French photographer Auguste Le Plongeon and his wife Alice Le Plongeon, who worked for several seasons on the Platform of the Eagles and the Jaguars. Major systematic excavation began in the 1920s under the Carnegie Institution of Washington and continued under the Mexican INAH from the 1950s.

The site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World as selected in 2000. The principal modern excavator has been Raciel Pérez de Heredia Puente of INAH, with important contributions from Clemency Chase Coggins (1980s) and Vera Tiesler Blos (2010s). The site is a focal point for the wider debate over the limits of cultural contact between the Maya and central Mexico, which is set out in is Chichén Itzá Maya or Toltec.

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