The Frontier Cities of the Northwest.
An important culture area is located upon the northwestern limits of the area of high culture in ancient Mexico. The best known and most accessible ruin is La Quemada, “The Burned” which is situated a day’s ride from the city of Zacatecas. This site was found in a deserted and ruinous condition by the Spaniards in 1535 and there is little doubt that it had been abandoned several centuries previous. La Quemada has been popularly associated with Chicomoztoc, “The Seven Caves,” a place famous in Aztecan mythology, but this association rests upon no scientific basis. It is simply an unauthoritative attempt to invest a forgotten city with a legendary interest. Chicomoztoc, where the Aztecs came out of the underworld might be compared with our own Garden of Eden and its exact location is just as much an eternal riddle. La Quemada is a terraced hill resembling Monte Alban and Xochicalco. The retaining walls of terraces and pyramids as well as the walls of buildings are still well preserved. These walls consist of slabs of stone set in a mortar of red earth. Perhaps the most noteworthy structure is a wide hall containing seven columns built of slabs of stone in the same manner as the walls. All in all the architectural types as well as the observed contacts in art point to a late epoch of the Toltecan period. Other ruins of the same character as La Quemada occur at Chalchihuites on the frontier of Durango and at Totoate, etc., in northern Jalisco.
The most important artistic product from this northwestern region is a peculiar kind of pottery which might be described as cloisonné or encaustic ware. Examination shows that this pottery was first burned in the usual way so that it acquired a red or orange color. Then the surface was covered with a layer of greenish or blackish pigment to the depth of perhaps a sixteenth of an inch. A large part of this surface layer was then carefully cut away with a sharp blade in such a way that the remaining portions outlined certain geometric and realistic figures. The sunken spaces, from which the material had just been removed, were then filled in flush with red, yellow, white, and green pigments. The designs on this class of pottery are thus mosaics in which the different colors are separated by narrow lines of a neutral tint. The geometric motives show a marked use of the terrace, the fret, and the scroll. The realistic subjects are presented in a highly conventionalized manner and have few stylistic similarities to the figures from the Valley of Mexico. Representative collections of this ware from Totoate, already referred to, and from Estanzuela, a hacienda near Guadalajara, are on exhibition in the American Museum of Natural History.
Cloisonné pottery of a somewhat different style sometimes occurs at Toltecan sites in the Valley of Mexico, such as Tula, Teotihuacan, and Atzcapotzalco, but fresco pottery which resembles it at first glance is more characteristic. It appears that the cloisonné process was taken over from the embellishment of gourd dishes in connection with which it still exists over a large part of Mexico and Central America.
Fig. 59. Vessel with “Cloisonné” Decoration in Heavy Pigments. This example comes from a mound at Atzcapotzalco and dates from late Toltecan times. Trade pieces of this ware have been found at Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico and Chichen Itza in Yucatan.
Fig. 60. The Turtle Motive as developed in Negative Painting with Wax at Totoate, Jalisco.
Another common method of ceramic decoration taken over was that of negative painting similar to the process used with cloth in making batik designs. This process still exists in Central America as regards gourd dishes although discontinued on pottery. Negative painting appears to be an ancient process of exceedingly wide distribution. It is especially common in Jalisco and Michoacan, the Valley of Toluca, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, and sometimes occurs in Yucatan and Peru. The design was painted in wax or some other soluble or combustible paint, then the entire surface was covered with a permanent paint. When the pot was burned the design came out in the natural color of the clay against a black, or sometimes a red field. The design was often made two layers deep by applying simple masses of red over the sizing before the impermanent paint of the design proper was put on. In the northwestern region of central Mexico now under consideration the negative painting technique is associated with conventionalized designs representing turtles ([Fig. 60]). Another ware with designs in white is concerned with derivatives of the turtle motive. Then there are the remarkable copper bells in the form of turtles made by coiling, that have been found in nearby Michoacan.
[Plate XXXV.]
Stone Slab from an Ancient Sepulcher in the State of Guerrero. The face at the top apparently represents a monkey, but serpents have been introduced between the eyes and the eyebrows. The other highly conventionalized faces are probably those of serpents.
Fig. 61. Jaguar Head on Disk-Shaped Stone. Salvador.
It is difficult to place time limits for the artistic styles that once existed in this northwestern region. The archaic culture seems to have lasted longer here than farther south; next followed the northern flow of Toltecan culture which later receded and finally came a rather thin layer of Chichimecan or Aztecan culture. We may tentatively conclude that the forgotten cities of the Zacatecan subculture flourished after 1000 A. D. The question should be settled because of its connection with the dating of Pueblo ruins farther north.