Santa Rosa Xtampak Archaeological Zone

Xtampak was the dominant city of the Chenes region during the Late Classic period, with more than a hundred recorded structures spread across a hilltop site far larger in extent than the more compact Chenes centres such as Hochob. Its three-storey Palacio is entered by an interior spiral staircase, an engineering solution rare in Maya architecture and almost unknown at other sites in the region, allowing movement between floors within the mass of the building rather than by exterior stairways alone. The surrounding plazas are honeycombed with chultunes, bottle-shaped cisterns cut into the bedrock to capture and store rainwater, a necessity in a region without permanent rivers or lakes and a system that underpinned the city's ability to support a large population on the exposed hilltop. As the political centre of the wider Chenes area, Xtampak likely held authority over smaller sites including Hochob, though the precise relationships between Chenes centres remain a subject of ongoing archaeological study. Excavation and consolidation have concentrated on the Palacio and the principal plazas, while many of the site's outlying structures remain only partially cleared, reflecting its scale relative to the resources available for a less-visited site than Edzna or Calakmul.