Fig. 39.—Polychrome pottery vase; Tlaxcalan or Cholulan style, found in Mexico city.
(After Seler)
Fig. 40.—Polychrome pottery vase from Tlaxcala.
(After Seler)
We must now consider the finest pottery in Mexico, viz. the ware characteristic of Cholula and Tlaxcala, which seems to bear certain relations to that of Oaxaca on the one hand, and, though less obviously, to that of the Totonac region on the other. The fact that Cholula was recognized as the leading centre of pottery manufacture and exported its wares in considerable quantity in times preceding and up to the conquest, renders the distinction between local types difficult, especially as the Totonac region seems to have been affected by Mexican conquest, and to have furnished tribute in pots. The typical ware of Cholula and Tlaxcala is hard and reddish, very well-mixed and fired, and rarely shows a dark line in the centre of a fracture. Forms include standing-bowls and -cups, tripod bowls and vases, handled jugs, plates and bowls with a slightly flattened base. Footed beakers also occur, but I am inclined to regard this form as one adopted from the Totonac. The vases are usually covered with an even and highly burnished red or yellow slip, on which are painted designs in a variety of colours, red, yellow, white, grey and black (Pl. [IX, 1], and Figs. [39] and [40]). Geometrical and textile patterns are common, and also figures and emblems of gods and men, animals and plants. The treatment is often bold and free, and though at times the designs suffer from over-conventionalization, they are always highly decorative. Relief ornament is occasionally seen in the shape of animal heads (Fig. [40]) or small pierced handles, and the designs are sometimes furnished with an engraved outline, though I believe both these features to be characteristic rather of Totonac art. The legs of tripod bowls, which are found in numbers, are usually moulded in the form of grotesque faces, or the heads of birds, beasts and snakes. Peculiar to Tlaxcala are interesting vases of black ware in the form of a Tlaloc face or figure, the details of which are applied. The scroll-work which constitutes a feature of the painted art bears a close analogy to the Xochicalco designs, and it is not surprising to find similar pottery in Oaxaca. It is quite true that Cholulan pottery may have found its way in some quantity to the last-named region, by the great trade-route which ran from Teotitlan to Oaxaca, but I am inclined to think that much at least of it must have been manufactured locally, especially as a certain form of tripod vase (Fig. [36, 4]; p. 185) seems peculiar to this country. Most remarkable of the finds in the Oaxaca district is that of pottery designs which any archæologist unaware of their real provenance would attribute unhesitatingly to the Peruvian coast. One of these is illustrated in Fig. [41], and a glance will show how it differs entirely from anything Mexican, and yet is absolutely identical with one of the patterns most commonly found on the polychrome tapestries of the Truxillo district of Peru. A peculiar class of Zapotec pottery may be mentioned here, consisting of figure vases of coarse red-brown or black ware, usually very brittle, found in tombs (Pl. [XVII, 7–9]). These seem to have been made solely for funerary purposes, since the figure element has been developed so as almost to eliminate the vase portion. The figures are represented as sitting or standing; they wear mantles with capes, and head-dresses in the form of a monster’s jaws with feather plumes. Many of them are shown with a peculiar mouth-mask, rather resembling the mouth-mask worn by the wind-god in Mexico and Guatemala, and also by certain figures on vases from Nasca in Peru; and occasionally the figure represents a bat. Many of them show traces of red paint, and the faces are very skilfully modelled. On the whole they are more Mayan than Mexican in appearance.
Fig. 41.—Design on a vase from Cuicatlan, Oaxaca.
(After Seler)
From Monte Alban and Xoxo come pottery fragments of rather thick ware, ornamented with broad red stripes on a red or yellow ground, somewhat similar to certain fragments from Teotihuacan; and elsewhere in the Zapotec country are found beakers with designs incised in outline and the background cut away (Fig. [33, b]; p. 176), similar in technique, though not in art, to beakers from the island of Sacrificios described below (e.g. Pl. [XVIII, 10]).