This peculiar closed vessel is somewhat reminiscent of the oldest artistic expressions of the Mesoamerican West: the curved handle. It is known as a stirrup or basket type, which also serves as a spout because it is hollow and has a short neck, reminiscent of the vessels with handle-stirrup mouths of the Capacha culture, dating back to the 1500 or 1200 BC and at the same time, to bottles with handle-stirrup spouts that distinguish ceramics from the Andean region of South America with which the peoples of the western region of Mesoamerica maintained ties throughout the centuries, since the time of the Capacha culture and even the Late Post-Classic Period. From this latter period it is known that the outstanding tarasca metallurgical production received technological influences from the South American northwest.
As an innovation that could be attributed to the tarasco ceramists, our vessel has another long lateral cylindrical spout. The body of composite silhouette refers to two bowls with outcurving walls ed by the mouth. As part of this culture, it is a repeated model, both in the shape of the recipient as in the pictorial decoration. Its excellent condition indicates its ritual character with a high probability of it being a burial offering for a person of high status. In the classification of tarascas vessels proposed by Raul Garcia it is type B. It exhibits an elaborate manufacturing, is painted in red and white, and the spout has both colors on each half.
On top of the body of the vessel we see, schematically and in white, a marine snail of the genus Strombus cut crosswise; the motif is a spiral whose outer turn consists of triangles representing the points where the shell's spiral ends. In Mesoamerican iconography this motif is a symbol of the wind, which originates in the aquatic underworld; in relation to this, the two white wavy lines on the sides refer to streams. In the middle section of the recipient and along the entire circumference there is a wide white stripe which includes: a band with red rectangles, straight lines and a band with lines in the form of an "S" in a diagonal arrangement.
The shining of the piece is due to a fine burnishing, of which marks carved in straight lines with a small hard object can be seen. The shine and the color red, which dominate visually, are characteristic of tarasca ceramics. By the late XIX century, when scientific knowledge of the cultures of the ancient West began, vessels with these traits from different cultures, such as Chupicuaro and the shaft tombs were wrongly attributed to the Tarasco; in particular the purepechas of the centuries close to the Conquest, not only because of the similarities, but because there was an antihistorical belief, of course also wrong, that the indigenous peoples of the time had inhabited the region in the Pre-Columbian period.
This peculiar closed vessel is somewhat reminiscent of the oldest artistic expressions of the Mesoamerican West: the curved handle. It is known as a stirrup or basket type, which also serves as a spout because it is hollow and has a short neck, reminiscent of the vessels with handle-stirrup mouths of the Capacha culture, dating back to the 1500 or 1200 BC and at the same time, to bottles with handle-stirrup spouts that distinguish ceramics from the Andean region of South America with which the peoples of the western region of Mesoamerica maintained ties throughout the centuries, since the time of the Capacha culture and even the Late Post-Classic Period. From this latter period it is known that the outstanding tarasca metallurgical production received technological influences from the South American northwest.
