The city was the largest in central Mexico in the 9th and 10th centuries, covering an area of some 12 km² with a population of at least some 30,000, possibly significantly more. While it might have been the largest city in Mesoamerica at the time, some Maya sites in the Yucatán may have rivaled its population during this period.
The location, unlike Teotihuacan, was selected for its defensive advantages. The main ceremonial or civic-religious zone of the site is only a little over a square kilometer in extent, but numerous plazas and mounds dotted over the nearby hills indicate a sizeable resident population, although nowhere near so large as Teotihuacan. The main ceremonial plaza is flanked by two platform mounds.
One of these was never fully excavated, but the other one was revealed as a terraced structure fronted by a colonnaded hall area and with surmounting temple. The temple’s interior is spacious; the roof was supported by wooden beams that had been placed across stone columns. These columns were typical of Tula. Each was made up of carved column drums which, when assembled, depicted Toltec warriors carrying atlatls, darts, and shields. An altar in the temple was supported by another kind of column, an atlantean figure bearing the dupported element on his upraised hands and head.
A large capital-I shaped ballcourt with stone marker rings set in the side walls, was near the temple pyramid, as was a second large but unexcavated ball court area. Characteristic decorative elements in the Tula friezes were warriors, jaguars, coyotes, eagles, skulls and crossbones, and feathered serpents. Curiously in this setting bristling with the panoply of war, the foremost god represented was Quatzalcoatl, not the victorius Tezcatlipoca.
Earlier ceramics at Tula reflected a style known as Coyotlatelco. Coyotlatelco pottery antedated the rise of great Tula; in fact, the style was widespread in Central Mexico following the fall of Teotihuacan. Coyotlatelco featured red-and-buff painting, which derived from earlier Teotihuacan traditions.
Later Tula ceramics, which are associated with its political rise, belong to a style called Mazapan, which developed out of the earlier Coyotlatelco. A distinctive Mazapan design element was a multiple, paralled wavy-line, usually painted on bowl interiors. Plumbate ware, a leadore glazed pottery and an early Postclassic Period horizon marker for Mesoamerica, was an important trade ware at Tula, probably brought in from Guatemala.
