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Teotihuacan pottery as evidence for subsistence practices involving maguey sap

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences volume 9, pages 11–27 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

As in most other pre-industrial cities, urban life at Teotihuacan was closely intertwined with ceramic technology, perhaps nowhere more so than in the realm of foodways. Here, we use two kinds of information derived from ancient pottery—ceramic residues and intra-site sherd distribution patterns—to shed new light on the city’s subsistence economy. We concentrate in particular on the amphora, a type of vessel that may have been used to contain aguamiel and pulque, liquid foodstuffs made of maguey sap. Distributional data distilled from surface collections of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project are informative about patterned variation in the use of these pots at the scale of the entire city. More focused analyses are aimed at chemical characterization of organic residues preserved in ceramic sherds recovered from recent excavations. Part of a broader project aimed at identifying both animal and plant remains, the results of the residue analysis provide the first direct identification of pulque remains in Teotihuacan pottery.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Consejo de Arqueología of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico (INAH) for granting permits for excavation at La Ventilla, San José 520, and 15:N1E6, and for the export of samples for analysis in the UK. Funding for excavation work was provided by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Inc., the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Arizona State University, and Stanford University. We are grateful to Erika Carrillo Ruíz (INAH-Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan) for various kinds of assistance, including the preparation of pottery samples from La Ventilla for residue analysis. We thank George L. Cowgill, Andrew Somerville, and Nawa Sugiyama for providing helpful feedback on a draft version of the paper. We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and advice during the review process.

As noted in the text, all technical work connected to the residue analysis project was carried out by Marisol Correa Ascencio, working under the direction of Richard P. Evershed in Evershed’s laboratory in the Organic Geochemistry Unit at Bristol University. We are grateful for their willingness to tackle a problem that has intrigued us (and other Mesoamericanist colleagues) for many years!

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  1. 41183 Circle 5 Estates, Calgary, AB, T3Z 2T4, Canada

    Ian G. Robertson

  2. School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-2402, USA

    M. Oralia Cabrera Cortés

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  1. Ian G. Robertson
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Correspondence to Ian G. Robertson.

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Robertson, I.G., Cabrera Cortés, M.O. Teotihuacan pottery as evidence for subsistence practices involving maguey sap. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 9, 11–27 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0415-z

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Keywords

  • Teotihuacan
  • Ceramics
  • Amphora
  • Pulque
  • Local spatial analysis
  • Residue analysis