Why go
The reliefs around Chichen Itza make more sense when seen as public images of power and belief, part of a wider Maya tradition of texts and images. Surviving stonework is only a fraction of what artists made in wood, plaster, shell and other materials.
The full story
Maya court art commonly recorded elite lives and linked ruling families to ancestors. Stone stelae were often paired with low round stones conventionally called altars, while reliefs covered panels, lintels and stairways. At Copán, a carved stairway carries a long hieroglyphic account; panels at Palenque and Piedras Negras show how text and figures could work together. These examples help explain why carvings at Chichen Itza deserve to be read, rather than treated only as decoration. Many artworks have vanished because they were made of wood or other perishable material. Surviving pieces also show remarkable range: difficult-to-cut flint forms represented people, animals and sacred motifs; Spondylus shells were worked to reveal their orange interiors; jade and other greenstones were prized for elite objects and funerary masks. Bone could be carved too, including human bone associated with ancestors or trophies. Small metal ornaments appeared in later centuries. None of these materials stood for all Maya art, and styles changed by place and period.