A painted ceramic fragment from the late pre-Hispanic period suggests Mixtec cultural exchange between Mesoamerican communities in the Tlaxcala region, challenging the long-held view that Tlaxcalan society remained culturally isolated during the last decades before the Spanish conquest, researchers said Tuesday.
The piece, a fragment of a large bowl or cajete (also called an “apaxtle”) recovered at TizatlAn and examined by the research team of the Ocotelulco site museum, dates to roughly 1450–1500, according to José Eduardo Contreras Martinez of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Contreras led the analysis of the museum collection that produced the finding.
The fragment depicts a nearly naked woman floating inside a water vessel and is strikingly similar, Contreras said, to imagery found on a mural known as Altar B at the TizatlAn archaeological zone and to scenes in the Mixtec Codex Nuttall, a 14th–15th-century manuscript from the Valley of Oaxaca. In both the ceramic fragment and the mural, the female figure appears with limbs slightly folded, long hair covering one breast, and surrounded by marine shells.
Ceramic suggests previously unknown cultural exchange between Mesoamerican communities
“The image of a woman in an aquatic context appears on page 16 of the Codex Nuttall,” Contreras said, describing parallels that include an eagle-like supernatural being and other attendant figures. “These elements, such as the posture, the shell, the ornaments, point to iconography of Mixtec origin and suggest participation by people of Mixtec background in the religious and ideological life of Tlaxcala.”
Contreras said the mural shows the submerged woman flanked by a bipedal jaguar and an eagle, with rain deities above, giving the scene a sacred character. The marine shell, he added, is associated in Mesoamerican symbolism with the female womb and fertility, while the aquatic setting evoked ritual cleansing and purification.
The presence of ear spools, a pectoral, and bracelets on the figure, markers of status, reinforced the interpretation that the image represented a noble or sacred personage rather than a mundane scene, Contreras said.
The region of Tlaxcala has historically been thought of as a culturally isolated region
Tlaxcala has often been portrayed as culturally cut off from surrounding regions in the late Postclassic period (roughly 1350–1521) because of a blockade imposed by the Mexica culture. But Contreras argued that the new study points to a more open and receptive Tlaxcalan society, one that integrated outsiders and adopted foreign motifs.
He suggested that the four Tlaxcalan lordships, Tizatlan, Ocotelulco, Quiahuixtlan, and Tepeticpac, “would have integrated people from other parts of Mesoamerica,” allowing Mixtec residents to leave a visible imprint on local ceramics and murals. That interaction, he said, helped renew community identity and promoted cooperation with people of the Valley of Oaxaca to overcome geographic and political barriers and open routes of exchange and knowledge.
The study was carried out in the Ocotelulco site museum’s research section and draws on comparisons between the ceramic fragment, local mural painting, and documented Mixtec images in the Codex Nuttall. Contreras and INAH called for continued study of the museum’s holdings to better understand the scope and meaning of cultural contacts in the region.