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

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.