Apron

Back to top: Apron

Introduction

The designation ‘apron’ for the trepezoidal stepped structure immediatly flanking the staircase, characterized by its high steps, was introduced in the 2004 excavation season, when the upper portion was exposed.

In modern theater architecture, an apron is the part of the stage that projects in front of the proscenium arch, extending into the audience area. The term reflects the use of the high steps as a siting or as a performance area and the form of the structure, which widened toward the bottom into the plaza, like the projecting front of a stage. For more implications and evidences see below and in function.

Together, the apron and stair form a single oblique plane: the staircase provides a relatively narrow route of ascent, whereas the apron, with its high steps, provides a transition between the easy access of the staircase and the vertical barrier of the revetment wall Buccellati Kelly-Buccellati 2009, 37.

Back to top: Apron

Main Apron

The main apron is described in the section staircases, because is a component of the monumental staircase at the eastern end of the plaza. See also function for interpretation of the structure

Back to top: Apron

Second Apron

WORK IN PROGRESS A secondary apron lies immediately west of the monumental staircase. It is a frame that marks the eastern end of the sacred space at a time when the Terrace was no longer marked by the revetment wall which had come to be obliterated by the rapid infilling of the Plaza (Buccellati 2010, 95).

What we had originally considered to be a secondary apron of the Temple Terrace entryway, we can now better understand as a structure serving a very different purpose, and conceived after the staircase and the revetment wall were no longer visible, hence independent of them. The evidence is as follows. The wide band of stones which at first appears as a wing connected to the monumental staircase is in fact separated by a gap, both to the east and to the south. The triangular effect (with the acute angle to the west), which seemed to support the interpretation as a wing or secondary apron, may be explained instead as a frame element that marks the eastern end of the surviving glacis, defining closure rather than access.

In fact, the top steps of the old staircase were removed and access was blocked by a mud brick wall that marked the new, very superficial, perimeter of the temenos. Such blocking would have redirected any access to the temenos towards the new western staircase of the Temple Terrace, now at the level of the outside spaces.

The “secondary apron” was possibly a memory marker of an earlier structure that would have been operational in the early periods as an intermediate station between the lower and the upper parts of the Temple Terrace (Buccellati 2019c, 346)