Late Postclassic lowland Maya civic-ceremonial masonry architecture appears in two main configurations—temple assemblages and basic ceremonial groups—first identified at Mayapan. Around the Peten lakes, these two architectural complexes have been tied to northern immigrant Kowojs and Itzas, respectively, and their distributions map the varying control over the lakes by these two ethnopolities. Temple assemblages exhibit considerable variation in their structural components and arrangements throughout the lowlands, but they have not been studied comparatively. Here, we examine 14 temple assemblages at 12 lowland sites. We consider one of the two assemblages at Zacpeten (Sak Peten), Group A, to have been built by Kowojs, who asserted their identity and earlier (Late/Terminal Classic) ties to the site by reusing carved monuments. “Blended” assemblage Group C is more difficult to parse, but reflects cosmo-calendrical principles of statecraft and the builders’ and users’ broader ties to Mayapan and Topoxte.

The Maya used dress to help them structure social interaction. Taking a behavioral chain and practice approach, I define dress elements of male courtiers and how they were combined into outfits during the daily practices of dressing and attending court. I identify two groups of headgear, Standard and Special, among courtiers on vases showing historical interaction among humans. Each vase is considered commemorative and must communicate to an audience. I identified six Standard hat types that were widespread in the Maya Lowlands. The distribution implies a basic set of recognizable roles that provided the political-religious structure of the typical Maya court, perhaps as early as the Late Preclassic period. Four of the hat types are connected to glyphic titles. Each titleholder's position in the vase's visual space implies a hierarchy of roles. The results support my hypothesis that dress does identify social roles in the Maya court.

I propose a “Milky Way / creation hypothesis” for the elongated eastern structures in early Maya E Groups: they were modeled on the Milky Way galaxy. These architectural arrangements, beginning in the Preclassic period (c. 900 B.C.–A.D. 200) in the southern Maya Lowlands, were adopted from predecessors in the Early Preclassic neighboring Gulf Coast region. The widespread overall similarity of E Groups suggests a shared belief system centered on myths about creation, and many of the characters (e.g., Maize God) and events of creation in Maya myths are set in the Milky Way. The general north–south axial orientation of the eastern platform, frequently pivoted northeast–southwest, is proposed to be related to the rainy season position of the Milky Way overhead. E Groups were probably multifunctional ritual theaters, the eastern platforms serving as stages for nighttime performances of creation stories. Late modifications into a tripart edifice, with structures or superstructures in the center and at both ends, replicated the major asterisms of the visible galaxy and/or the creator gods.