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Causeway/sacbe

Encyclopedia of the Ancient Maya (p 64-65)

CAUSEWAY/SACBE. The Maya causeway is often called by its Yucatec term sacbe, which translates as “white road.” A sacbe is an extended, linear, two-sided stone platform of variable height, width and length with a constructed surface. It was used for separating and connecting various buildings, features and locations. Sacbes were part of large and small centers between the late Middle Formative and the Postclassic. Most causeways were constructed in a similar manner. After the course of the causeway had been established by removing vegetation the ground was cleared down to the natural subsurface. Two parallel dry-laid retaining walls of cut and uncut stones were laid down and the area in-between was filled with cobbles, gravel, and packed soil. Sascab or lime plaster covered the surface of a causeway. Causeways may or may not include parapets and/or drainage culverts. There have been three main archaeological ways of classifying these constructed causeways: site layout, spatial extent, and assemblage. The site-layout approach looks at the whole settlement pattern rather than the single road. These causeway layouts are basically linear or radial (the latter term includes triadic, cruciform, and dendritic causeway systems). Some sites may have more than one layout. Linear causeway systems show no obvious hierarchy if they connect architectural groups of similar size (such as at Yo’okop). In the radial versions the center is the dominant node. Caracol was a centralized settlement with administrative nodes based on a dendritic transport/causeway system. Most generalized classifications of causeways derive from the spatial dimensions. The causeways varied between 1 meter up to 70 meters in width, from a few meters to 100 km in length, and from ground level to 7 meters in height. Standardized spatial units of length and width may have been used in some cases, like the triadic causeways at Ichmul. The length of a causeway is argued to reflect the spatial extent of social integration and interaction. The classification from length has the advantage that the height and width of a causeway may have changed along its course. Short intrasite causeways probably had a wider variety of functions. They could be used in water management, ceremonial processions, demarcations of districts or defining sacred space. Longer roads would have had greater political importance, especially in areas with dispersed population where causeways unite site core and outlier. Thus, intersite causeways can be seen as integrative structures. The intersite causeways may have been a way to extend and maintain boundaries, like the sacbes at Izamal, Coba, and El Mirador. Classification based on the assemblages formed between a causeway and other features in a local context emphasizes site-specific patterns. A causeway ended or began at different kinds of termini, such as ramps, pyramids, ballcourts, range structures, plazas, domestic structures, cenotes and caves. Causeways are also associated with albarradas, walls, stelae, boundary stones, carvings, and water sources. Sacbes also varied because of the nature of the terrain, such as topography, surface conditions, hydrology and avoidance of valuable agricultural land. A crucial aspect of the integrative functions of causeways was their use in rituals and ceremonial circuits associated with various calendars and the spatial divisions of a site and polity. These were performed through ritual circumambulation and periphery-centre circuits which some causeway systems are believed to reflect. Ethnohistorical data suggests that wayeb rituals were associated with causeway processions. The Twin pyramid complexes at Tikal were located along the causeway system of the site. The pyramids are seen as being crucial nodes of k’atun period rituals and processions. Further Reading Chase, Arlen F., and Diane Z. Chase. “Ancient Maya Causeways and Organization at Caracol, Belize.” Ancient Mesoamerica 12 (2001):273-81. Normark, Johan. “Involutions of Materiality: Operationalizing a Neo-Materialist Perspective through the Causeways of Ichmul and Yo’okop, Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17(2) (2010):132-73. Shaw, Justine M. White Roads of the Yucatan: Changing Social Landscapes of the Lowland Maya. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008. 3