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Edzná: Plan of Late Classic Maya site center

The larger, restored structures at Edzná are clustered in the site center around the Great Plaza, the ceremonial focus of the Late Classic Maya site. This 160 x 100 m open space is surrounded by several building groups. Rising 6.5 m above the east side of the Great Plaza is the 150 m square platform of the Great Acropolis. Approached by a monumental stone stairway flanked by the Northwest and Southwest Temples, the structures on the Acropolis are dominated by the Five-Level Pyramid, showing two distinct building phases. Adjoining it is the House of the Moon, an 8 m-high platform mound whose temple on top consists of a long chamber and two small side rooms, possibly priest’s quarters.

[Fig.1: Plan of the center of Edzná (after G. Andrews 1984).]

To the south, the Small Acropolis (91 by 76 m) contains the Temple of the Stelae and the Temple of the Old Woman. West of the Great Plaza and approached by a sacbe is the Nohol Na, a 120 m long palace structure with an unrestored façade, and the Platform of the Knives, with an elite residence and possible ballcourt. The many outlying residential mound groups at Edzná are mainly unexcavated and uncleared with little visible impact, but represent important earlier components dating from the Late Preclassic, when Edzná first became a large site in the Campeche lowlands.

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