What we call the Tarascan culture today does not refer to an ethnic group, but one of multiethnic composition whose peak occurred during the two centuries before the Spanish Conquest in most of the current state of Michoacan and some adjacent areas of Jalisco, Guanajuato and Guerrero. This society was made up of Mazahua, Otomi, Nahua, Chontal, Apanecan, Cuicatlecan groups and at the head were the Purepecha. Surely such diversity led to changes in artistic production, among them, ceramics.
As much for the shape of the container as its decoration, the vessel we see does not correspond to the most recognized Tarascan pottery, it is likely related to the type called Chila polychrome, identified by Isabel Kelly in the area of Apatzingan in Tierra Caliente, Michoacan. It is a straight walled bowl with three hollow cylindrical s and pictorial motifs arranged in concentric bands and geometric delineated sections; unlike Chila polychrome, this is not a molcajete, that is, the bottom of the bowl does not have incised lines or crosshatching.
The best known tripod bowl from the basins of the lakes of Patzcuaro and Cuitzeo, in the Late Post Classic, has converging curved walls, and the s are large and trapezoidal, quite often the motifs are not enclosed in geometric sections and some of them were painted in black negative. Our vessel is painted positive in black and cream on red. The composition is tripartite, geometric and of abstract appearance. The exterior features three sets of three vertical bands and three trapezoidal shapes, each enclosing two zigzag bands. The rhomboidal section, which is believed to have been painted, contains a cross motif in two of the boxes and a stepped diagonal band appears in one; the s have horizontal bands (three black and two cream).
The interior displays, from top to bottom and following the entire circumference of the bowl, a band with triangles; a main wide band with motifs similar to the trapezoids described above, and that together seem to be the main motifs; one of these in particular shows zigzag bands between two rhombuses, each with a cross. These quads are interleaved with three series of vertical bands, followed by a band with alternating quads with straight or diagonal lines and quads with triangles above and below the horizontal bands. In general, some of the aforementioned triangles are black, although this color stands out in the delineation of the motifs, and in the short straight lines of the main zigzag motifs.
The bottom of the vessel is smooth red and lacks pronounced signs of wear, which when coupled with the good condition of the rest of the pictorial decoration, leads to the assumption that their practical use was limited, perhaps as a container for solid and soft materials. Another use of the vessel was to produce sounds, since the opening at the end of the s indicate that they are hollow and it was common for them to function as rattles. It is reminiscent of the ceramic vessels of the ceramic complex of the Aztatlan culture, developed mainly between 900 and 1200 B.C. in Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco and up to Lake Chapala; there is a wide variety of vessel types which are characterized by the decor with abstract geometric motifs and some schematic figures arranged in bands or quads.
Tripod vessels in the style of the one in question were found in the late XIX century by Carl Lumholtz in Cheran, a town nestled in the Purepecha Plateau. Recently, the michoacan sculptor and ceramist Raul Garcia informs of others from the Balsas River basin, which is in the Tierra Caliente area, between the municipalities of Zirandaro, Guerrero and the Michoacan municipalities of Huetamo and Churumuco, and also in Uruapan, where Tierra Caliente and the Purepecha Plateau meet.
What we call the Tarascan culture today does not refer to an ethnic group, but one of multiethnic composition whose peak occurred during the two centuries before the Spanish Conquest in most of the current state of Michoacan and some adjacent areas of Jalisco, Guanajuato and Guerrero. This society was made up of Mazahua, Otomi, Nahua, Chontal, Apanecan, Cuicatlecan groups and at the head were the Purepecha. Surely such diversity led to changes in artistic production, among them, ceramics.
