SELECTED ARCHITECTURAL TERMS

Abstract

Butt The parts of beams that bear on their supports are their butts. Some butts are concealed, others exposed. Construction Stage Major works of architecture at Tikal display a standard set of the following features: basal platform, pyramid, lower substructure platform, supplementary platform, building platform, building, and roofcomb. Building and building platform appear most frequently, and others appear on various structures in various combinations. They are numbered from topmost to basal, but described in reverse order, that is, basal to topmost. Although the terms imply distinct stages of construction, this is not always the case. For example, some building platforms are not stages of construction at all, and many buildings present walls, vaults, and upper zones as distinct constructional modules that perhaps might best be designated as substages, though this has not been formalized.