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2025-05-07
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Abstract
Tonalá, Mexico’s ancient pottery tradition and religious culture foreground the introduction of púcaros, a polished ceramic drinking vessel popular in Spain. In the Classic period, bichromatic burnished ceramics were traditionally used in a funerary context to honor the Tonalteca elite. The production of red-slipped burnished wares during the colonial period reveals the Tonalteca’s desire to reestablish their Indigenous ceramic traditions and mobilize their awareness of Spanish consumer’s taste. Although Spanish colonization prompted epidemics and Christian conversion, the Indigenous artisans overcame these challenges, building a ceramics industry that preserved their pottery techniques. An examination of the Indigenous adaptation and Spanish infiltration of these burnished ceramics demonstrates the transculturation of Indigenous wares from bichromatic religious vessels into monochromatic secular redware, indicating cultural resistance under Spanish colonial rule.
The infiltration of Tonalá redware in elite Spanish society manifests in Baroque Spanish still lifes, media that artistically represent these Indigenous-made ceramics as collectible curiosities. Traditional art historical studies read these vessels as emblems of empire, but I claim that red burnished ware in Spanish still lifes reveal Indigenous agency, positioning these Tonalteca artisans as contributors to European culture. Using materiality and material culture methods, I argue that burnished ceramics, both as religious offerings in the tombs of the deceased in Tonalá and as utilitarian redware in the homes of peninsular Spaniards are symbols of socio-economic status and power. When depicted in still life paintings, these now secularized objects undergo further commodification as fictionalized representations, underscoring the transculturation of Indigenous Tonalteca products into desirable status symbols for the Spanish elite.
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Art
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Diel, Lori B.