Small clay bowls used centuries ago by Aztec women to spin cotton also held a secret ingredient for coloring textiles, new research shows.
Scientists studying artifacts from a Late Postclassic site near Xochimilco, in the Basin of Mexico, found traces of a red dye called cochineal inside the bowls. The discovery suggests these vessels served more than one purpose in the daily work of making cloth.
The bowls come from chinampa communities, the floating farm plots built on the lake systems south of what is now Mexico City. Archaeologists recovered twenty-two of these small vessels decades ago from household sites dated between 1400 and 1500 AD.
Four bowls were chosen for chemical testing. Two showed reddish stains on their inner surfaces, and two had no visible color, serving as a comparison. Researchers used a method called high-performance liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry to study residue scraped from inside the bowls.
Lab analysis confirms cochineal traces in ancient vessels
The technique lets scientists identify tiny traces of chemical compounds invisible to the naked eye. Initial results looked unclear, but a more sensitive scan targeting specific molecules confirmed the presence of carminic acid, the main coloring compound in cochineal dye.
All four bowls carried traces of this compound and several of its breakdown products, even the ones without visible staining.
Cochineal comes from a small insect that lives on prickly pear cactus. The Aztecs called it “nocheztli,” meaning blood of the prickly pear, according to early colonial-era writings cited in the study.
The dye was highly prized for its deep red color and was recorded as a tribute item paid to the Aztec empire, according to documents like the Codex Mendoza.
Rocío Berenice Jiménez-González, the study’s lead author from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the presence of cochineal inside spinning bowls points to a broader role for these tools.
How Aztec women used bowls for spinning and dyeing textiles
Instead of only holding spindles during spinning, the vessels likely also stored or mixed dye, she said. That means women weavers handled both fiber preparation and coloring within the same workspace.
The chinampa zone did not produce cochineal locally, meaning the dye had to travel through trade or tribute networks to reach these households, researchers noted. That detail highlights how ordinary domestic work connected to larger economic systems across the Aztec empire.
The findings, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, add rare physical proof that Aztec women combined spinning and dyeing while making textiles, using the same small bowls for both tasks.
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