Bidspirit auction | Pre-columbian Aztec Terracotta Pottery Vessel

Pre-columbian Aztec Terracotta Pottery Vessel - Pre-columbian Aztec Terracotta Pottery Vessel | Found near San Baltazar Temaxcalac in Mexico | Bottom has old museum label with ”San Baltasar Temascalac” | San Baltazar Temaxcalac means the ”place full of temazcales” - A temazcal is a type of low heat sweat lodge or steam bath, which originated with pre-Hispanic Indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica. The term temazcal comes from the Nahuatl word temāzcalli. In 2020, archaeologists from Mexico’s Directorate of Archaeological Rescue and National Institute of Anthropology and History uncovered a fourteenth-century temazcal, or ritual steam bath, measuring about 16 feet long by nine feet wide. The discovery of the temazcal, which had been marked on historic maps, has allowed the researchers to pinpoint the location of Temazcaltitlán, one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. This area of the city was known as a place where female deities such as Tlazolteotl, the goddess of childbirth and purification, and Coatlicue, Toci, Chalchiuhtlicue, and Mayahuel, who are linked to land, fertility, water, and the fermented beverage pulque, were venerated. A house thought to have been inhabited by Mexica nobility shortly after the Spanish conquest, and a tannery built in the eighteenth century, were also found on the site | Approx. Size: 4.75” H x 4” D.