Glossary

Kubler, George

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Glossary

George Kubler

The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: The Mexican, Maya and Andean Peoples

Glossary

Author

George Kubler

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00123.023

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14205

Glossary

Adobe. Clay from which sun-dried bricks are made; unburnt bricks.

Adorno. Any modelled clay attachment to a vessel wall or rim.

Atadura. Literally, a binding. Maya façade moulding at impost level, usually consisting of three members.

Atlatl. Wooden throwing-board for javelins, serving to lengthen the user’s radius of reach.

Avant-corps. Projecting portion, suggesting a wing or pavilion, which interrupts the continuity of the plane of a façade.

Batter. In a wall of tapered section, the sloping face. A wall with inverted taper, thicker at the top than at the bottom, has negative batter.

Cella. A temple chamber.

Cenote. Natural well in a collapsed portion of the surface limestone of Yucatán.

Chacmool. A fanciful yet standard term designating the stone figures of recumbent human males shown holding basins or platters on the abdomen (Mexico and Yucatán).

Chamfer. A horizontal moulding of intaglio effect recessed within the wall of a Maya temple or pyramidal platform.

Chapopote. Shiny pigment of resin, asphalt, and soot used in Veracruz pottery painting.

Chinampa. A small artificial island made for gardening in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico.

Chullpa. In the Central Andes, a stone tower used for burials.

Cire perdue. The lost-wax method of casting metal objects by displacing a waxen model with molten metal.

Classic. A developmental stage in Mesoamerican archaeology, referring to the period of the rise of high civilizations in many independent centres.

Codex. The European book, consisting of leaves or folds of rectangular pages sewn together at one side, adopted by American peoples only after the Spanish Conquest.

Collao. A district of the Andean highlands around Lake Titicaca.

Concrete. A mixture of cement, sand, and water with any aggregate, capable of setting to the hardness of stone.

Fine orange. Untempered pinkish-orange pottery of dense paste.

Fin wall. Masonry membranes compartmenting the loose infilling in pyramid facings.

Flying façade. Ornamental vertical extension in the plane of the façade of a Maya building.

Glyph. Each pebble-shaped unit of Maya writing.

Greenstone. Those American minerals, e.g. nephrite, serpentine, wernerite, possessing colours similar to oriental jades.

Hacha. Thin stone blades with profiles of human heads.

Header. Of bricks or stones, those laid in the wall with the smallest face exposed.

Horizon style. A complex of traits having a known position in time, useful to date new finds and to correlate regions in time.

Huaca. Quechua term in the central Andean region for any buried or ruined structure of putative religious use: more generally, any sacred thing or creature.

Initial Series. A Classic Maya method (also called Long Count) for dating events by the day-count from a starting point. Identified by its initial position in longer inscriptions. Each digit is vigesimal rather than decimal: in a date transcribed 9.3.10.10.5, the first digit states that 9 cycles of 400 years (each having 20 periods of 20 years) have elapsed, followed by 3 twenty-year periods or katuns, 10 tuns or years of 360 days each, 10 uinals or months of 20 days each, and 5 kins or days. The total enumerates the days which have elapsed since the starting-point.

Lienzo. A Mexican pictorial chart drawn or painted on a sheet of cloth.

Lost wax. See Cire perdue.

Mapa. A Mexican chart or pictorial table displaying geographical and historical relationships.

Mesoamerica. The parts of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America occupied by peoples of advanced urban traditions.

Metate. Náhuatl term for a portable stone surface for grinding food.

Middle America. The area from Panama to the Rio Grande, including the Antilles.

Milpa. In Central America, a small burned clearing planted and abandoned after a few seasons.

Mise en couleur. A colouring process for gold-copper alloys by immersion in an acid pickle to dissolve the oxides, leaving a coating of pure gold.

Negative painting. Before firing, a vessel surface partly covered with wax is immersed in slip. Firing fixes the coloured slip but clears the waxed portions, so that the figure and its ground are reversed.

Palma. Tall, fan-shaped stones with concavely curved bases.

Palmate stone. See Palma.

Pastillage. Sculpture built of pellets of plaster shaped over a rough stone core.

Pirca. Andean wall construction using dry-laid, unshaped stones.

Plectogenic. Textile ornament of rectilinear composition determined by loom stringing in warps and wefts.

Plumbate. Monochrome pottery of a hard, grey, vitrified surface found throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Post-fired painting. Addition of stucco or paint to pottery surfaces after firing.

Quetzal. A Central American bird of brilliant plumage.

Radiocarbon dating. Natural carbon 14 produced by cosmic rays enters the carbon dioxide life cycle at a constant rate. Upon the death of the organism the amount of C14 will decay according to the known half-life of 5730 ± 30 years. The measured residue of C14 in organic samples allows relatively precise age determinations

Resist-painting (see Negative painting). A batik process, in which waxed parts of a cloth remain undyed.

Roof-comb. Ornamental vertical extension rising above the rear wall or over the centre of Maya temple roofs.

Slip. A wash or dip of clay applied before the final firing of pottery objects, serving as ground for painted designs.

Spall. A large splinter or chip of stone, used to adjust the seat of larger stones in the coursing of the wall.

Stirrup spout. In Mochica pottery, a pouring vent consisting of two tubular branches united at the spout.

Stretcher. A brick or stone laid in the wall with its longer face showing.

Tablero. Literally, an apron. On the stages of a pyramidal platform, these portions rise vertically above each of the diagonal portions of the silhouette.

Talus. The slope of the face of a building, like the rock debris at the foot of a cliff: see Batter.

Tapia. A wall built by successive layers of puddled clay, i.e., worked when wet to be impervious to water.

Teotihuacano. Related to Teotihuacán in an adjectival sense (as Hispanic, or Italianate, or Parisian).

Tepetate. In Mexico, a lava flow of pumice-stone.

Teponaztli. Horizontal cylindrical drum slotted to form two tongues of different pitch.

Terraced meander. A band pattern of stepped rectilinear segments.

Tezontle. A light and porous volcanic stone, usually red, grey, or black, common in the Valley of Mexico.

Tlachtli. Náhuatl term for the I-shaped ball-court used throughout Middle America.

Tumbaga. An alloy of gold with copper.

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