Tepontla Burnished

Tepontla Burnished Gray/Brown usually appears in serving wares, especially conical bowls. It was most common in the Classic period, but continued into the Early Postclassic in very low frequencies. It is characterized by its burnished surface finish and monochrome color, usually gray to brown.

Paste and Firing Effects

The paste is light to medium brown in color. It is fine to medium grain, with few inclusions. Sherds are compact and exhibit medium hardness. Firing cores are rare, but surface color appears to be related to firing technique, with frequent firing clouds and color possibly varying based on how a vessel was placed in relation to the fire.

Surface Treatment

This type is characterized by numerous burnishing marks over the slipped exterior and/or interior surface. The interior finish is usually medium burnished, while the exterior tends to be wiped to medium burnished, with relatively more rough spots, scratches and streaks. Burnishing marks are diagnostic of this type, which contrasts with the better quality finish of Tecola Polished.

Figure 1: Examples of Tepontla Burnished from Transito site

Decoration

Tepontla Burnished is generally undecorated apart from the monochrome slip that covers the entire vessel. The most common colors are gray to brown, but it also occurs in reddish brown, light tan and reddish orange. Two minor subtypes were identified at UA-1 (Table 7): Incised and Red Rim. The Incised subtype has shallow geometric and curvilinear incising on the exterior of hemispherical bowls. The Red Rim subtype has a narrow band of reddish paint on the interior and/or exterior rim of serving vessels.

A subtype that was identified in the R-106 assemblage featured pattern-burnishing on the exterior wall of conical bowls, with the pattern usually of a panel of "X"s (Fig. 1). Since the R-106 sequence spanned the Middle Classic period, the Pattern-Burnished subtype may become a useful temporal diagnostic (McCafferty 1996a; McCafferty, Suárez and Edelstein n.d.).

Vessel Forms

Tepontla Burnished generally occurs in serving ware vessels, including outleaned wall bowls, subhemispherical bowls, and conical bowls, but small mouth ollas also occur in low frequency. The conical bowl is by far the most common form (53% of the type total), with medium thick walls, a rim diameter measuring between 20 to 25 cm, and vessel height of between 5 to 10 cm (Fig. 2). A characteristic of this vessel form is its flat base and a pronounced angle formed where the vessel wall joins the base. Nubbin-supports were a fairly common feature among examples from the R-106 assemblage. Conical bowls often have a slightly flared rim and interior tapering of the lip.

Discussion

Tepontla Burnished is the predominant diagnostic of the Classic period in Cholula. Noguera (1954:188-189) described it in reference to Teotihuacan-style ceramics, and this formed the basis for his relative chronology and further cultural reconstructions. Müller (1978) described the type under her "Pulido" class for the Classic and Epiclassic periods. Tepontla Burnished made up 53% of the R-106 subfloor assemblage (McCafferty, Suárez, and Edelstein n.d.; McCafferty 1996a). Although the type is most common in Classic period contexts, such as the construction fill from the Great Pyramid, it is also prominent at the Epiclassic site of Cerro Zapotecas and at the Patio of the Carved Skulls, where it made up about 30% of the assemblage (McCafferty 1996a).

Regionally, similar pottery is known from the Tlaxcala area, and also from the Valley of Mexico. In both areas it is regarded as diagnostic of the Classic period.

This type was not classified with Postclassic pottery from previous UDLA excavations, perhaps because when present it was interpreted as mixed Classic period material.

At UA-1, the relative frequency of the type in the Trash Midden context (3%) indicates that Tepontla Burnished was still in use as a small but significant element of the assemblage. Its frequency, however, was greatly reduced in Wells 1 and 2. A single collection unit from the Trash Midden, Bag #8153, produced an unusually high frequency of Tepontla Burnished (15%), along with anachronistic types such as Teotihuacan Thin Orange, indicating that this collection unit intersected a Classic period feature (see discussion in Chapter V).

Recognizing that Tepontla Burnished continued in use into the Early Postclassic is important for reinterpreting the culture historical sequence of the Classic/Postclassic transition. For example, the co-occurrence of Tepontla Burnished and Cocoyotla Black on Natural at the Patio of the Carved Skulls contradicts the traditional interpretation that a significant cultural break occurred following the end of the Classic period (Dumond and Müller 1972). Furthermore, it opens the door for revising the Epiclassic chronology, since areas that were previously interpreted as Late Classic based on the presence of this "Teotihuacan-influenced" ceramic may actually have been occupied into the Early Postclassic, depending on what other types were present in the assemblage.