(b) A View at La Quemada. Cylindrical columns built up of slabs of stone supported the roofs of some of the structures. The use of columns was characteristic of late Toltecan times.
Unlike the other Toltecan cities Cholula was still inhabited and a place of religions importance when Cortez arrived in Mexico. But the figurines and pottery vessels that are found at this site belong for the most part to an epoch earlier than that of the Aztecs. Quetzalcoatl was the patron deity of Cholula and in the decorative art the serpent is finely conventionalized. A pottery shape frequently met with at Cholula is the flat plate bearing polychrome designs.
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.