Movement
Mesoamerican Architecture
Explore in the Atlas →The monumental building tradition of pre-Columbian cultures across present-day Mexico and Central America, including the Olmec, Maya and Aztec, characterised by flat-topped stepped pyramids surmounted by temples, ceremonial plazas, ball courts and astronomical alignments charged with cosmological meaning linking underworld, earth and heavens.
Ritual Power Memory
Details
- Origin
- Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America)
Classifications
- Holder
- Communal intergenerational
- Source of authority
- Revelation cosmologyAncestry
- Subject
- More than human
- Cosmological orientation
- Cardinal axesAxis mundi
- Degree of codification
- Protocol performed
- Mode of transmission
- ApprenticeshipOral song embodied
- Knowledge type
- Relational embodied
- Epistemic cluster
- Cross cultural cosmological
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Mesoamerican architecture. Britannica, 2024.
- World History Encyclopedia. Maya Architecture. World History Encyclopedia, 2015.
- George Kubler. The Art and Architecture of Ancient America. Penguin Books, 1962.
Cite this entry
First published May 2026Last revised Jul 2026
CLAD. "Mesoamerican Architecture." Atlas of Architectural Thought. CLAD, 2026. https://www.cl-ad.com.au/research/atlas/movement/mesoamerican-architecture/. Accessed July 17, 2026.