[Aztlan] Plaster Technology

[Sam Edgerton]

David: Thanks for your lengthy reply concerning my comments about chirping 
echoes reflected from the masonry surfaces of ancient Maya architecture. 
You might even have phrased your response more succinctly in Biblical 
terms: "Blessed are those that have heard and believed, but also blessed 
are they that have not heard but might yet believe!"  The latter refers to 
me.  However, my real interest in this subject has not so much to do with 
prescient Maya understanding of acoustics or any other supposedly modern 
science, but rather how they improved and discovered new applications for 
their basic technologies, especially the use of plaster. I was initially 
aroused by the Jeremy Sabloff article cited earlier which argued that the 
Post-Classic Maya were not "decadent" because of their lavish use of 
plaster to cover stone work less carefully assembled as in the Classic 
period.  Rather, the article implied, that the PC Maya had realized that 
such plaster veneer was actually a means of saving time and labor, less 
energy spent on forcing hard stones into proper place and more on molding 
malleable material into more aesthetic shapes; mind over muscle as it were, 
and thus signifying technological progress and even increased material 
prosperity.

I'd like to believe that technological progress in general began among the 
ancient Maya in the same way as in the medieval West.  Simple tools are 
invented in response to  simple needs, then they are improved and modified 
for other related purposes, then as often happened they are replaced by 
better tools made of superior material that in the meantime had been 
indigenously discovered or introduced from an outside source or invented 
for yet another need, immediately requiring new craftsmanship to fashion 
these new materials not only for old conventional uses but for even more 
complicated applications, enabled by the new tools' unique properties - in 
other words, the gradual building of a complex technological 
infra-structure that in time allows for a breakthrough to a whole new 
mega-level of technological expansion, such as happened in the West with 
the need for ever more mechanical power - first from human and animal 
labor, then by harnessing wind, water and focussed heat, then by the 
control of electricity and lastly the release (and hopeful safe control) of 
atomic energy.  Unfortunately, such an evolution in Maya civilization was 
interrupted too early on, but I still think its parallel presence, even if 
hardly in sync with the early West, can nevertheless be traced as following 
along similar lines, and that the expanding use of plaster may be 
indication of this process. For example, the several Maya applications of 
lime, for bonding and paving, as plastic material for sculptural art, and 
as the totally different but essential ingredient for the nixtamalization 
of maize - which use came first, and did one then lead to the others?  A 
good book to stimulate thinking about this is George Kubler's classic, THE 
SHAPE OF TIME.

Sam Edgerton