Xpujil means Place of the Cattails in Maya. It was named by members of the fourth Carnegie Expedition to Campeche, who "discovered" the site in 1938.
As Tatiana Proskouriakoff remarks in her Album of Maya Architecture, "it is to the gum-chewing habit of our sedentary city-dwellers that we owe what little knowledge we have of the mysteries hidden in this deserted land".
This is because Karl Ruppert worked with the chicleros to locate many of the sites he visited or discovered. Ruppert writes: "Although the Second Campeche Expedition visited several new sites the next year, it became obvious that it was most advantageous to enter the area when chicle operations were under way, for then chicleros could be questioned about the location of ruins. However, chicleros work during the height of the rainy season, when it is not feasible to carry on investigations.
We decided to adopt the alternative of sending a native who could inquire of the chicleros about the location of ruins and then late in January, as the rainy season drew to a close, act as guide to the expedition. So, late in August, a capable man who had been with the 1933 expedition, went the round of the chicle camps. We were more than repaid the expense of his four months' tour by the number of ruins he reported and located and by the time saved the 1934 expedition while in the field."
Ruppert & Denison, Archaeological Reconnaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Peten, 1943
Structure 1 of Group 1 at Xpujil is a beautiful example of the Rio Bec style and one of the gifts of the chicleros.
Photo from 1938: Carnegie expedition, Ruppert & Denison, Archaeological Reconnaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Peten, 1943
Structure I, Group I as it was when we visited in 1997
Tiatiana Proskouriakoff's reconstruction, in her "An Album of Maya Architecture". University of Oklahoma Press. Norman and London 1963.
Gendrop, Paul. Rio Bec, Chenes, & Puuc Styles in Maya Architecture. Labyrinthos Press. Lancaster, California 1998, p. 47
"The distribution of interior space is also based on strict principles of symmetry in reference to the transversal axis of the building. The most common disposition is that of double (eventually triple or even quardruple) elongated rows of rooms with an addition at the end of short lateral rooms, perpendicular to the others, whenever these is a door opening on the lateral façade (an arrangement which, it is true, is common to many Maya buildings without massive towers).
Depending on the length of the building, there are one or three doors in the main façade, while the rear façade--which can have two and, exceptionally, four doors--frequently has none, displays plain sections, admirable executed. This is precisely one of the great qualities of Yucatan architecture: the profuse usage of wide, smooth lower wall zones that can extend from one end to the other, outlined only by neat moldings which accentuate the principal horizontal divisions of the building."
Gendrop, Paul. Rio Bec, Chenes, & Puuc Styles in Maya Architecture. Labyrinthos Press. Lancaster, California 1998, p. 47
A 1997 photo of the south end of Structure 1 Group 1, compared to a restoration drawings. The right edge of the photo bisects the doorway to the interior staircase inside the south tower.
The photo also shows a decorative panel in stone mosaic & plaster. Proskouriakoff's drawing (above) contains the reconstructed doorway but shows a plain panel, because Ruppert claimed to have found only a plain inset panel in the lower wall zone at the north end of the building in 1938 (p. 87).
However, my photos show a decorated panel, and Potter, in 1970, writes: "however, it was evident that a panel at this location contained relief sculpture similar to that on the east facade." The next photo shows a more detailed view of the mysterious decorated panel now in place.
The entrance to the south tower interior stairway is on the extreme right. The west tower can be seen in the background. At center is the well-preserved decorative panel.
This figure has a very Chenes feel. Even though it portrays a long-nosed god, it is reminiscent of the abstract and linear portrayals of serpent profiles seen on many of the " monster mouth" temples in the Chenes region, for example in these panels at Hochob (use back button to return here).
This stair & passageway up through the south tower is very narrow and steep, and appears to follow the almost vertical black line in Ruppert's diagram. After what little remains of the stairs, a horizontal corridor emerges onto what had once been the roof of the building, but is now a sheer drop.
"The north and south towers are lower than the central one and are now in a greater state of ruin (pl. 38c).
The south tower contains a passageway with portions of the upper part intact. Presumably one entrance was in a plain inset panel of the first zone of the south side whence a stairway led upward to the level of the roof of the building.
Five of the final upper risers are intact. From the top of the series of steps the passage extends horizontally westward 1.28 m., then northward 3.45 m. to the margins of the fallen masonry (pl. 40a); this portion is vaulted. The passageway had no doubt continued 70 cm. farther to open onto the roof of Room 1 (fig. 109). No indications of a passage were seen in either of the other towers."
Ruppert, Karl & John H. Denison, Jr. Archaeological Reconnaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, & Peten. Publication 543. Washington D.C. Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1943, p. 87
I actually climbed this passageway during our 1997 trip. It was dark and narrow and claustrophobic and I was terrified of snakes, but as the upper photo attests, I eventually made it to the top.
"The crowning glory of this building is its three towers. The west, or back, tower is the best preserved and presumably representative.
Much of the facing stone of its tiers with rounded corners is still in position, and much of the upper portion of the ornamental stairway remains intact."
Potter, David F. Maya Architecture of the Central Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Middle American Research Institute 44. New Orleans. Tulane University 1977, p. 92
Shown on the right is a Carnegie Expedition photo from 1938 (Ruppert 1943: Plate 39b).
"Much of the upper portion of the ornamental stairway remains intact. Non-functional stairways such as this apparently ascended both the east and west faces; they are so steep as to be utterly impossible to climb. The risers have a reverse batter in order to provide the desired indication of steps."
Potter, David F. Maya Architecture of the Central Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Middle American Research Institute 44. New Orleans. Tulane University 1977, p. 92
"The main façade with the silhouette of its two frontal towers dominates the other buildings at the site, while the tall rear tower looks towards the west, toward the city of Becán specifically, whose mass can be detected some seven kilometers away."
Gendrop, Paul. Rio Bec, Chenes, & Puuc Styles in Maya Architecture. Labyrinthos Press. Lancaster, California 1998, p. 39
The well-preserved uppermost stucco mask on Structure I's central Río Bec style tower. The plate on the right shows how this mask appeared during the Carnegie Expedition in 1938.
Ruppert, Karl & John H. Denison, Jr. Archaeological Reconnaissance in Campeche, Quintana Roo, & Peten. Publication 543. Washington D.C. Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1943: Plate 40b
Paul Gendrop mentions a different aspect of these buildings: "Another feature which I think interesting to mention is the existence of those strange "sight tubes" or "observation ducts" that frequently go throught the mass of a simulated temple or a large tower, as in the case of Rio Bec B, Xpuhil, the side abutment of Structure V at Hormiguero, or that strange cylindrical tower at Puerto Rico.
Usually horizontal and rectilineal (except for a few deliberate offshoots in the Puerto Rico tower), they might have functioned as part of some signaling system or light communication, perhaps from one city to another, as could have been the case with the ducts that transpass the whole base of the rear pseudo-temple at Xpuhil and might have been seen from the narrow window on the third level of Structure IV at Becán, situated almost seven kilometers away on an evident east-west axis."
Gendrop, Paul. Rio Bec, Chenes, and Puuc Styles in Maya Architecture. Labyrinthos Press. Lancaster, California 1998, p 62
From Ruppert & Denison, Fig. 110
A second Titiana Proskouriakoff reconstruction drawing, this time without the roof combs and without the elaborate relief sculpture on the upper part of the façade above the doorways. Use this model to aid picturing what the original building might have looked like. Click on the red rectangles to compare the archaeological evidence with the reconstruction.
Paul Gendrop writes, "There is hardly a site in the Río Bec region that does not have one or more of these peculiar buildings flanked by towers, abutments, and/or massive pylons [such as those at Río Bec A and B, Hormiguero II, V, and VI, Chicanná Str. I, Dzibilnocac, and others. Use your "back button" to return here]. This fact, together with the prevalence that this type of construction has, also tells us about an important symbolic-religious function."
An unusual variant of this type of building is Structure VIII at Becán -- a Rio Bec range type building built this time on top of a pyramid-like structure which displays "-- strangely set on the roof--two appendages like truncated pyramids with rounded corners, crowned by a roofcomb and with a simulated stairway on the front."
Gendrop, Paul. Rio Bec, Chenes, and Puuc Styles in Maya Architecture. Labyrinthos Press. Lancaster, California 1998, p.61