Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

tezoquitl.

Headword: 
tezoquitl.
Principal English Translation: 

heavy clay
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62; see p. 54.

Orthographic Variants: 
teçoquitl
Attestations from sources in English: 

teçoquitl = tezoquitl = "sticky, gummy" clay. Also: "Niconchiva, napilolchiva, njtzotzocolchiva, njcaxchiva, njteconchiva, napazchiva: in çaço tlein njcchiva, njçoquichiva" [Niconchihua, napilolchihua, nitzotzocolchihua, nicaxchihua, nitecochihua, napazchihua: in zazo tlein nicchihua, nizoquichihua. (modification of the orthography by SW)] = "I make ollas. I make water jars. I make large water jars. I make bowls, pots, basins. Whatsoever I make, I make of clay." (1570s, central Mexico)
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. 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. 231r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/231r . Accessed 9 January 2026.

“...teçoquitl, heavy clay (Sahagún, 1963, p. 252).... ” (p. 54)
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62.

“Ethnographic data suggest that heavy clay is the appropriate translation of the stone-spine glyph. Nahuatl-speaking campesinos in the area refer to the clay soils as tezoquitl. Clays and clay loams dominate the valley floor around Tepetlaoztoc today and probably did in the sixteenth century.”
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62.

In the glyphics, “the angle at which the spine pierces the stone does not alter the meaning of clay (teçoquitl), nor does the orientation of the stone.” (p. 58)
Barbara J. Williams, "Pictorial Representation of Soils in the Valley of Mexico: Evidence from the Codex Vergara," Geoscience and Man 21 (1980), 51–62.

themes: 
Ceramics, Pottery
Landscape Features