Trade and Influence

Chupícuaro sherds, vessels, figurines, and styles appear in local assemblages at so many locations throughout Central and Western Mexico that a Chupícuaro tradition can be postulated, one which is especially strong in the west of the Valley of Mexico (McBride 33). Chupícuaro’s location at the intersection of West and Central Mexico allows it to play the role of a “strategic center” for “several cultural spheres” (Darras and Faugère, “Chupícuaro”, par. 4). In general, there is significant inter-influence, often resulting from trade, between figurine types in Central Mexico (McBride 41-46). In Chupícuaro’s case, Chupícuaro-influenced and Chupícuaro trade ceramics can be found in a litany of sites and regions, including nearby Colima, Nayarit, and Cuicuilco, as well as the rising state of Teotihuacán (33-38).

The Chupícuaro-style traits that are imitated are also numerous: hollow ceramic figurines; choker[1], and slant eye[2] (also categorized as H4) figurine styles; brown, black, and red polychrome vessels; basal-break[3] bowls and cylinders; pedestal bases; spider-leg tripod supports, sometimes with the diamond chain design on the bowl and red banded legs common to the vessel form; Red on Buff decoration; clay earplugs; tecomates[4]; geometric designs such as the black winged motif; mammiform[5] tripod supports; blackware; modeled faces; and Red on Brown quadrate[6] pattern tripod and tetrapod bowls (McBride 33-44). The Red on Buff decoration style continued to be found in the Valley of Mexico after the decline of Chupícuaro in the Mid-Classic, which may be due to the popularity of the style and Chupícuaro’s influence (McBride 40; Weaver 11, 13).

Recognizable Chupícuaro elements are found as far south as Gualupita, South Central Mexico (McBride 33). Nearby Cerro del Tepalcate revealed a large quantity of Chupícuaro sherds, found between floor layers in a religious building (34). The distance, lack of plain wares, and religious setting indicate that Chupícuaro’s vessels were valuable trade items (34). As mentioned previously, there is even a possible cultural contact with the Southwestern US, where the Mogollan and Hohokam people of Southern New Mexico and Arizona borrowed color, shape, and design motifs from before AD 100 (38-39, 41). These influences may have reached them through direct trade or through intermediaries (41). A Chupícuaro “quadrant design of nested triangles on the interior” can also be found as “an important decorative theme in the oldest Southwestern panted wares and in the Zacatecas and Durango in a somewhat later period” (McBride 40). Overall, Chupícuaro influence extends South through the Valley of Mexico, North to the Southwest US, West to the Cohuayana Valley Coast between Michoacán and Colima, and East to La Quemada (33-38), an extremely wide sphere for a single site. McBride suggests a “Northern complex (labeled tentatively the Chupícuaro tradition)” (42) that describes this wave of figurine types developed in Chupícuaro and invasive or influential to figurine traditions of other areas. Such a complex could also be applied to ceramic vessels and geometric motifs.

Influence also flowed in the opposite direction. There are scattered examples of “resist or negative painting” (Weaver 13) among Chupícuaro vessels, a technique adopted from Valley of Mexico. Stirrup spouted vessels were adopted from the Andes, South America, yet painted in the distinctive black polychrome Chupícuaro style (Weaver 13-14). Other Chupicuaro ceramics and other artifacts were common throughout Mesoamerica prior to the settlement of Chupícuaro, entering the area with the Chupícuaro migrants. These included pottery techniques, blackware, red on buff pottery, atlatls, manos and metates, and basic crops (Weaver 5-15).