Most famous of these structure in Temple of the Niches in which the six terrace faces of the pyramid are inset with 365 masonry niches. Tajin architecture utilized the corbelet vault and roof comb inventions of the Lowland Maya and may have borrowed them from the region of the Puuc in Yucatan. Tajin was built and flourished largely in the Classic Period, particularly the Late Classic, but it also continued an important center through the early part of the Postclassic Period, to perhaps as late as A.D. 1200. Although Tajin has been linked with the Totonac nation by some ethnohistorians and archaeologists, this identification cannot be proved. History and archaeology do indeed converge on the Totonac but much later, on the Spanish Conquest horizon in the Postclassic site of Cempoala.
The Classic Veracruz style, as represented at Tajin and elsewhere, exhibits Olmec and Izapan strains and was probably derived from these earlier Gulf Coast styles. Serpents, jaguars, frogs, and humans were its central motifs, and these were set within very ornate and intricate interlaced ribbon scrolls. In fact, the ornamental embellishment dominated the iconographic themes. Carvings in this style decorate architectural features at Tajin, but the art also was lavished on carved-stone mirror-backs, "yokes", "palmas," and "hachas." The yokes, palmas, and hachas probably represent stone replicas of wooden paraphernalia used in the ceremonial ballgame. Yokes, which are large horseshoe-shaped affairs, were worn around the waist of the players as protective belts and the long, thin, paddle-shaped palmas were apparently fitted into the fronts of this belt. Just what function the hachas performed is less certain; perhaps they were court markers or scoring devices used in the game. This hachas, or " thin-stone heads" as they are sometimes called, are approximately life-sized human heads or faces in profile.
They were widely traded in southern Mesoamerica over routes that extended far beyond the borders of Central Veracruz into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and down the Pacific coast of Guatemala.
It may well be that the Mesoamerican ballgame was invented in Veracruz or at least along the Gulf Coast. The region apparently is a natural habitat for rubber trees. The ball employed in the game was made from rubber, the game has along history in Veracruz. Although the stone ball courts date only to the Classic Period, the yokes have been found in earlier contexts. A fragment of one, for example, came from a Middle Preclassic Period level at the Trapiche site in Central Veracruz. Seven ball courts were constructed at El Tajin alone.
