Proyecto de Arquitectura Subterránea de Quintana Roo, Mexico

Innovative imaging and visualization techniques allow for the capture and display of features or objects within their broader spatial contexts. With respect to Maya cave architecture, high-resolution panoramic visualization can be a powerful analytical tool, enabling the evaluation of potentially meaningful relationships between natural features – be they entrances, pools of water, or speleothems – and constructed features within a cave.  Given their remarkable stylistic correspondence to Postclassic temple architecture, cave shrines and altars provide compelling and unambiguous evidence for religious practice in the cave environment. Initial comparative and multiscalar analyses across terrestrial and subterranean environments – facilitated, in part, by specific visualization techniques – provide insight into the form, function, and meaning Postclassic cave architecture in the northeastern Maya lowlands.