House C, West Side
West side of House C with remains of House A-D in upper left.
Technologically, the Maya must be classified as Stone Age artisans, since all sculpture, architectural construction, and lapidary art were executed without the use of metal. Preferred sculptural media were the softer, more pliable stones, such as the limestone characteristic of the Maya Lowlands.
Schele & Miller, The Blood of Kings, p. 33
West side of House C
From the Maudslay Collection, British Museum. Used with permission under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 non-commercial license. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Looking south towards the Tower from the west side of House C.
To some degree stylistic development was formed by the properties of locally available stone. For example, Palenque sculptors preferred wall-mounted slabs to stelae, perhaps because their local limestone, although an excellent medium for relief, was too brittle to use for freestanding stelae.
Schele & Miller, The Blood of Kings, p. 33