El Caracol - Chichen Itza, Mexico
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D68K51 | |
| Project Name | El Caracol - Chichen Itza |
| Country | Mexico |
| Status | Upcoming |
| Citation |
| Dominique Meyer, Travis Stanton, Jesus Gallegos Flores, Luis Alberto Catana, Scott McAvoy, Dominique Rissolo, Francisco Pérez Ruiz, Jose Francisco Javier Osorio León, Falko Kuester, Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI), Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) 2026: El Caracol - Chichen Itza - LiDAR - Mobile, Photogrammetry - Terrestrial, Photogrammetry - Aerial, Short Range Scan. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D68K51 |
| Download |
| Spatial Data | Coming Soon |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| LiDAR - Mobile | 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 | El Caracol — "snail" in Spanish — takes its name from the spiral staircase winding up the interior of its round central tower. One of the very few circular structures at Chichén Itzá, it rises in stacked tiers on a broad rectangular platform in the site's Central Group, within sight of El Castillo. A stela on the upper platform dates the building to around A.D. 906, though it appears to have been raised and modified across several construction phases.
The Tower is also referred to as "El Observatorio", On the flat Yucatán plain, where no natural markers break the horizon, its elevated chamber gave observers an unobstructed 360-degree view of the sky above the surrounding forrest.
The building's alignments point especially toward Venus, a planet the Maya associated with war and with Kukulcán. Mayan astronomers knew from naked-eye observation that Venus completes its cycle in about 584 days, and that five Venus cycles equal eight solar years. The tower's surviving windows frame the planet's northern and southern extremes, while the grand staircase faces 27.5 degrees north of west — matching Venus's northernmost rising — and the platform's diagonal corners align to the solstice sunrises and sunsets.
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| Project Description | Over the course of several field Seasons between July 2018 and December 2025, archaeologists 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
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| Collection Date | 2026-07-18 to 2026-12-14 |
| 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 | Dominique Meyer, Travis Stanton, Jesus Gallegos Flores, Luis Alberto Catana, Scott McAvoy, Dominique Rissolo, Francisco Pérez Ruiz, Jose Francisco Javier Osorio León, Falko Kuester, Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) , Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) |
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