Maya architecture was a regional variation on widespread and long-lived Mesoamerican themes: plazas with pyramids supporting temples and palaces, house platforms and ballcourts.
Maya pyramids were built of limestone rubble and marl (clay soil), faced with a durable white plaster made of ground burnt limestone mixed with water.
They rose in smooth stepped tiers, very different from the zigzag profile of highland pyramids, and these tiers were often decorated with huge masks symbolizing deities.
A long staircase led up the face of the pyramid to the high narrow temple on the summit, often crowned with an additional masonry comb to increase its height.
Unlike the flat-roofed structures of the highlands, Maya temples and palaces had corbelled roofs - vaulted roofs constructed with courses of projecting stones. Inscriptions, elaborate carvings and frescoes adorned most of these structures: in some, carved wooden lintels survive.
A feature shared by peasant hut and mighty temple was their simultaneous use for burial: commoners simply beneath the house floors of their surviving relatives, kings in elaborate chambers sunk from the temple floor into the pyramid.
