THE LESSER CIVILIZATIONS 161 
The retaining walls of terraces and pyramids as well 
as the walls of buildings are still well preserved. These 
walls consist of slabs of stone set in a mortar of red 
earth. Perhaps the most noteworthy structure is a 
wide hall containing seven columns built of slabs of 
stone in the same manner as the walls. All in all the 
architectural types as well as the observed contacts in 
art point to a late epoch of the Toltecan period. Other 
ruins of the same character as La Quemada occur at 
Chalchihuites on the frontier of Durango and at 
Totoate, ete., in northern Jalisco. 
The most important artistic product from this north- 
western region is a peculiar kind of pottery which might 
be described as cloisonné or encaustic ware. Exam- 
ination shows that this pottery was first burned in the 
usual way so that it acquired a red or orange color. 
Then the surface was covered with a layer of greenish or 
blackish pigment to the depth of perhaps a sixteenth of 
an inch. A large part of this surface layer was then 
carefully cut away with a sharp blade in such a way that 
the remaining portions outlined certain geometric and 
realistic figures. The sunken spaces, from which the 
material had just been removed, were then filled in 
flush with red, yellow, white, and green pigments. The 
designs on this class of pottery are thus mosaics in which 
the different colors are separated by narrow lines of a 
neutral tint. The geometric motives show a marked use 
of the terrace, the fret, and the scroll. The realistic sub- 
jects are presented in a highly conventionalized manner 
and have few stylistic similarities to the figures from the 
Valley of Mexico. Representative collections of this 
ware from Totoate, already referred to, and from Estan- 
suela, a hacienda near Guadalajara are on exhibition. 
Cloisonné pottery of a somewhat different style 
sometimes occurs at Toltecan sites in the Valley of 
