Detail of the Building of Five Stories. In the foreground, a round column (complete with capital) once helped support a stone lintel in order to make a wider doorway. This kind of column, while rare or nonexistent elsewhere in the Maya area, became quite common in the Puuc region of Western Yucatan and Northern Campeche during the Terminal Classic period, while the massive roofcomb shown in the upper portion of this picture is typical of Petén architecture. Not surprisingly, Edzna has long been considered a city straddling the building traditions of the Petén and the Puuc. Whether the differences between the two areas were not merely architectural but cultural is more difficult to ascertain. |