Archaeologists with the Templo Mayor Project (PTM) in Mexico City have unearthed a massive ceremonial offering including dozens of greenstone figurines, thousands of marine elements, copal, tar, and monumental sculptures deposited in a single event in the middle of the 15th century.
The greenstone figurines are carved in the Mezcala style from the present-day Guerrero area. The Mezcala figurines were already antiques when they were deposited, some of them as much as 1,000 years old. Archaeologists believe they were cult effigies that were plundered by the Mexica when they conquered the Guerrero region. They were brought to the capital as war booty and red and white pigments were applied to reconfigure the figurines with the attributes of the god Tlaloc.
The newly-discovered offerings, numbered 186, 187 and 189, were found in three stone chests, known as tepetlacalli. Offering 186 was was unearthed in 2023, and the next two in the most recent dig season. The chests, their contents and their date of deposition matches three other offerings found in previous excavations. Offerings 18 and 19, discovered in the late 1970s, were found on the west side of the great temple pyramid, and Offering 97 was found in 1991 on the north side. They too contained marine elements and 40 greenstone figures in the Mezcala style, for a total of 83 greenstone figurines between the six deposits.
The offerings date to Stage IV of the Templo Mayor, between 1440 and 1469, the regnal years of Moctezuma Ilhuicamina (meaning the Archer of the Sky), the fifth king of Tenochtitlan and second emperor of the Aztec Empire. When the previous three offerings were found, archaeologists hypothesized that there might be another three on offerings on the east and south of the pyramid. That has now been proven true.
In addition to the moveable objects in the depositions, there are monumental sculptures weighing as much as a ton, w
hich would have required complex logistics (ropes, levels, rollers) to move to and arrange at the temple. The scale of the offerings is so colossal that the ceremony must have been one of the largest ever seen in pre-Hispanic Mexico.
Such a large number of Mezcala figurines do not appear before or after in the archaeological record of the Templo Mayor. Moctezuma Ilhuicamina was the first king of Tenochtitlan to conquer territories outside the Valley of Mexico. He conquered Tlaxco and Tlaxmalac in Guerrero between 1447 and 1450, which is likely when he returned absolutely heaving with war booty that were then deposited in a massive ceremony with dozens of priests and the whole population of the city in front of the Templo Mayor.
* This article was originally published here
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