A Hypothesis Concerning the Relationship between Texcoco Fabric-Marked Pottery, Tlateles, and Chinampa Agriculture

1 October 1967

journal article
Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in American Antiquity

Vol. 32 (4) , 515-522
https://doi.org/10.2307/2694079

Abstract

In his surface survey of the Valley of Mexico, Tolstoy found large quantities of a distinctive type of pottery concentrated in the southwestern portion of Lake Texcoco (Tolstoy 1958: 53). This pottery, called Texcoco Fabric-marked, was almost always found on low mounds, tlateles, lying either within or very near the old lake bed.Tolstoy offers no explanation for the correlation between the tlateles and the fabric-marked pottery other than that they seem in some way “to be traditionally connected with the Aztec practice of extracting salt.”Evidence is presented in this paper that shows Tolstoy's explanation of the use of Texcoco Fabric-marked pottery is not a very satisfactory one, and an alternative hypothesis—that this fabric-marked pottery was used in food production—is proposed.

Keywords

This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:

The Chinampas of Mexico
Scientific American, 1964
Surface Survey of the Northern Valley of Mexico: The Classic and Post-Classic Periods
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1958
Notes on Some Ceramic Techniques and Intrusions in Central Mexico
American Antiquity, 1947
The primitive salt production of Lake Texcoco, Mexico
Ethnos, 1944
Excavaciones en el Tepalcate, Chimalhuacan, Mexico
American Antiquity, 1943
The “Tlateles” of Lake Texcoco
American Antiquity, 1943