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callalli.

Headword: 
callalli.
Principal English Translation: 

"house land" = the garden-field pertaining to a person's house, providing the basic sustenance of the family
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976).

house-land, cultivated land that goes with the dwelling complex of a household
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 212.

Orthographic Variants: 
callālli, callali
IPAspelling: 
kɑllɑːlli
Alonso de Molina: 

Callalli. solar o tierra que esta junto ala casa.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 11v.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

calli, tlālli.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 212.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents callalli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

"...despues que se cava y siembra es fértile." (1570s, central Mexico)
Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 227v. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/227v/images/ef2f2814-... . Accessed 7 January 2026.

inic cecni callali tlacomolco = 1st, house-land at Tlacomolco (Coyoacan, mid-sixteenth c.)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 26, 160–161.

isquich yn nocanlal = all my house-land (Coyoacan, 1575)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 20, 112–113.

callalli = core land around the home, compared to more scattered parcels
Rebecca Horn and James Lockhart, "Mundane Documents in Nahuatl," in James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood, eds., Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, Preliminary Version (e-book) (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Project, 2007, 2010), 8.

callalli: house land (the tl- of tlalli is assimilated to the -ll- of calli in forming this compound word made from calli, house, and tlalli, land)
S. L. Cline, Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600: A Social History of an Aztec Town (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986, 235. See also: Sarah Cline, "The Book of Tributes: The Cuernavaca-region Censuses," in James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood, eds., Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, Preliminary Version (e-book) (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Project, 2007.

callalli = houselot or land that is next to the house
a translation from Alonso de Molina, 1571, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 11v.

yn callali quimocotonizque = they are to divide the callalli (tezontl, Tetzcoco, 1689) (Xocotitlan, Tlalmanalco, 1722)
James Lockhart collection, in a folder called "Land and Economy," citing AGN Tierras 2338, exp. 6. English translation proposed by Stephanie Wood.

omacoc yn icalal nochhue = The houseplot of [francisco] nochhue was assigned (Tepetlaoztoc, sixteenth century)
Barbara J. Williams and H. R. Harvey, The Códice de Santa María Asunción: Facsimile and Commentary: Households and Lands in Sixteenth-Century Tepetlaoztoc (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 134–135.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yn callalli Quauhtepec at onpoualmatl auh ynic cuentemi at onpoualmatl onmacuilli amo uey = las tierras con casas de Quauhtepec tiene cuarenta brazas y pero cultivadas son cuarenta y cinco brazas, no es muy grande (Tlaxcala, 1567)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 241.

caxtoli ome ycalali ca moch meyotoc = sitios de casas, que se comprende quince [sic] pedazos que hoy están sembrados de magueyes (Zempoala, "1610", but probably Techialoyan -related)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 88–89.

Auh yn ipan nicah callalli ça no ytech pohui yn tlahtocayotl yn ixquich yc manih auh yehuatl nicpialtitiuh yn nochpoch Magdalena = Y esta casa en que estoy, que le pertenece a la comunidad, con todo lo que tiene, y la dejo aguarda[da] a mi hija Magdalena (Tulancingo, 1572)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 168–169.

themes: 
Agriculture, Gardens, Stockraising
Land Tenure