El Gran Juego de Pelota - Chichen Itza, Mexico
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D64S4G | |
| Project Name | El Gran Juego de Pelota - Chichen Itza |
| Country | Mexico |
| Status | Upcoming |
| Citation |
| Travis Stanton, Dominique Meyer, Jesus Gallegos Flores, Luis Alberto Catana, Dominique Rissolo, Scott McAvoy, Francisco Pérez Ruiz, Jose Francisco Javier Osorio León, Falko Kuester, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH), Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) 2026: El Gran Juego de Pelota - Chichen Itza - LiDAR - Aerial, LiDAR - Terrestrial, Photogrammetry - Terrestrial, Photogrammetry - Aerial, Short Range Scan. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D64S4G |
| Download |
| Spatial Data | Coming Soon |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| LiDAR - Aerial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| LiDAR - Terrestrial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Photogrammetry - Terrestrial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Photogrammetry - Aerial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Short Range Scan | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Background |
| Site Description | The Great Ball Court is the largest and best-preserved ballcourt in all of Mesoamerica, and the grandest of the roughly thirteen courts identified at Chichén Itzá. Its playing field measures about 168 by 70 meters, bounded by two parallel walls some 95 meters long and 8 meters high, laid out in the I-shaped plan common to Mesoamerican courts.
Here the Maya played a version of the ballgame — often called Pitz or Pok-ta-Pok — in which a heavy solid rubber ball was driven through stone rings mounted high on the walls using the hips, elbows, and knees, never the hands. The two rings, set roughly 8 meters up, are carved with intertwined feathered serpents.
Along the base of the walls run carved panels showing processions of elaborately padded players and scenes of ritual decapitation, in which the blood of the victim streams from the neck as writhing serpents — an image linking sacrifice to fertility and regeneration. Whether the winning or the losing captain met this fate remains debated among scholars.
The court is also famed for its acoustics: a conversation at one end can be heard some 135 meters away at the other, and a single clap returns as a series of echoes. Temples frame the arena — the Temple of the Jaguars on the east, with its jaguar throne and battle murals, and the North Temple, known as the Temple of the Bearded Man — elevated platforms from which the city's elite could watch a spectacle that was at once sport, ritual, and political theater. | |
| Project Description | Over the course of several field Seasons between July 2018 and December 2025, archaeologists and engineers performed a number of 3D captures through a variety of means, capturing exterior and interior (cave) detail. This digital palimpsest contains Drone photogrammetry, high resolution structures light scans, and mobile LiDAR of the interior cave system. The details of these efforts are included in the following field reports:
Mcavoy, S. P, Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2025). Chichen Itza, Mayapan, Coba, Xkukikan - December 7th - 14th, 2024 Yucatan, Mexico. UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6nn5s6d9
Stanton, T. W, Mcavoy, S. P, Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2025). Chichen Itza, Yaxuna, Ek Balam, Yula, Maya and June 2023, Yucatan Mexico. UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9666z0dd
Mcavoy, S. P, Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2023). Chichen Itza and Ek Balam, Yucatan, Mexico August 27th – September 2nd 2023. . UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8qg65087
Mcavoy, S. P, Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2023). Chichen Itza and Merida, Mexico February 6th-12th 2023. UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1jb1q2fr
| |
| Collection Date | 2018-07-16 to 2025-12-16 |
| Publication Date | 2026-07-05 |
| License Type | CC BY |
| Model Information |
| Reuse Score | A - High-Quality Model with Accurate Georeferencing |
| Curator Notes | Georeferencing is performed through alignment with the following foundational dataset:
Travis Stanton, National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), Francisco Pérez Ruiz, Jose Francisco Javier Osorio León 2026: Chichen Itza Tourist Zone - NCALM Aerial LiDAR - LiDAR - Aerial. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D6NS3R
A report concerning the accuracy of these models is upcoming in 2026. |
| Entities |
| Contributors | Travis Stanton, Dominique Meyer, Jesus Gallegos Flores, Luis Alberto Catana, Dominique Rissolo, Scott McAvoy, Francisco Pérez Ruiz, Jose Francisco Javier Osorio León, Falko Kuester, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH), Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) |
Go Back