Fishes from Complex A offerings of Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City, Mexico)

Abstract

This paper deals with the fish remains found in the 11 offerings known as Com- plex A, deposited around the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, the main ceremonial building of the Mexica culture. The study of over 35,000 fish remains showed that 391 individuals from 63 species and 35 families were present. Seven species were particularly important because of the number of individuals and their frequency, although the only fish found in all the offerings was the sawfish (Pristis). Only marine species were included in the offerings, most of which came from the Atlantic Ocean. Many of the fish had a taxidermic preparation of one kind or another. The offerings placed directly in the fill were noticeably less diverse compared to the offerings placed in ashlar stone boxes. Although some of the offered species were related to the ones men- tioned by the Aztec historian Sahagún, ethnohistorical sources provide little information about marine fish and their ritual use; hence the importance of proper recovery and study of those re- mains as the primary and almost exclusive source of the relationship between the Mexica people and this faunal resource.