ceramic-making before the conquest
51
todas las provincias comarcanasâ€?.2 This city was not only an important regional pilgrimage focus at that time but also a large commercial center, as is clearly stated in the chronicles of the first Spaniards who were there, such as Bernal DĂaz del Castillo (1980:149, 150) and Gabriel de Rojas (1985:132), corregidor of the city in 1581. Other lines of evidence also confirm that Cholula was specialized in ceramicmaking. Compositional analysis of fine polychrome vessels from several places in the valley of Puebla-Tlaxcala show that they were made in that city, though there were also other centers of production in the vicinity of Huejotzingo and in Ocotelulco (Neff et al. 1994). In addition, the high variability in decorative styles and shapes of common ceramics from other places in the valley also suggests the existence of many places of production (see Castillo 2007). In the valley of Morelos compositional analysis of ceramics from Yautepec shows that most of these materials were made in the surrounding region although there were also ceramics produced in other areas in Morelos and in the valley of Mexico (Smith et al. 2006). Several stages of the pre-colonial process of ceramic-making in central Mexico can be reconstructed from visible manufacturing traces on the vessels and from extant documents. Those sources of information, however, do not shed light on other parts of the process of manufacturing, such as the methods for clay procuring, drying and storing vessels. In view of this, six stages of the process of ceramicmaking will be broached here: (a) clay preparation; (b) vessel forming; (c) vessel surface finishing; (d) firing; (e) decoration, and (f) assembling vessel shapes. (a) Clay preparation Essential for potters is that the clay for making ceramics is workable. This means that the blend of clay minerals and non-plastic particles, naturally present or added by the potter, must be suitable for forming vessels; to be precise, the clay should be plastic enough to acquire the form given by the potter but not too plastic as it has to retain the new shape (Rye 1981:31). For this purpose the clay can be prepared in different ways; potters may add non-plastic inclusions such as sand, organic materials, crushed sherds, or they may mix clays of different 2 They make there very good pottery wares, red and white ones, with a variety of paintings, and they are supplied to Mexico and all neigbourhoud provinces (DĂaz del Castillo 1980:149, my translation).