CACALACHTLI
CACALACHTLI
MEXICA pottery with a tripod vase, the hollow legs of which contain clay pellets:
these jingle when the jar is moved about. Of the 1,500 pre contact Mexican pottery jars
studied by Jose Alcina Franch
- from Michoacan, Cholula, Panuco, and Santiago Tuxtla (Veracruz),
as well as from characteristically Aztec and Mixtec sites - 22% of them stand on rattling legs.
Less frequently, the handles of certain clay stamps, used to print designs on the skin,
contain the same kind of rattling pellet.
Jose Alcina Franch contends that these rattles guarantee a ritual use.
"The cacalachtlis are not really musical instruments, but objects that had other functions to which pellets,
stones or shakers were added. Jose Alcina* in his article about ritual shakers describes them as tripod vases with hollow legs that contained clay pellets which rattled when they were moved about."
AZTEC PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS
NORMAN WEINBERG
Although he offers no Aztec name for these clay rattles or jingling clay receptacles,
defines cacalachtli as "clay jingle" and cacalaca as to sound the clay jingle or any
"clay receptacle with small stony petals inside"
Alonso de Molina,
Vocabulario en lengua Mexicana (1571, fol, 10v)
Sahagun callas a clay incense ladle that rattles a cacalachtli in Appendix 3to Bood 2 - The Ceremonies
( Anderson and Dibble trans., ;. 181)
*SONAJAS RITUALES EN LA CERAMICA MEJICANA
RITUAL RATTLES IN MEXICAN POTTERY
by Jose Alcina Franch
and
REVISTA DE INDIAS XLLL/54
MEXICA pottery with a tripod vase, the hollow legs of which contain clay pellets:
these jingle when the jar is moved about. Of the 1,500 pre contact Mexican pottery jars
studied by Jose Alcina Franch
- from Michoacan, Cholula, Panuco, and Santiago Tuxtla (Veracruz),
as well as from characteristically Aztec and Mixtec sites - 22% of them stand on rattling legs.
Less frequently, the handles of certain clay stamps, used to print designs on the skin,
contain the same kind of rattling pellet.
Jose Alcina Franch contends that these rattles guarantee a ritual use.
"The cacalachtlis are not really musical instruments, but objects that had other functions to which pellets,
stones or shakers were added. Jose Alcina* in his article about ritual shakers describes them as tripod vases with hollow legs that contained clay pellets which rattled when they were moved about."
AZTEC PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS
NORMAN WEINBERG
Although he offers no Aztec name for these clay rattles or jingling clay receptacles,
defines cacalachtli as "clay jingle" and cacalaca as to sound the clay jingle or any
"clay receptacle with small stony petals inside"
Alonso de Molina,
Vocabulario en lengua Mexicana (1571, fol, 10v)
Sahagun callas a clay incense ladle that rattles a cacalachtli in Appendix 3to Bood 2 - The Ceremonies
( Anderson and Dibble trans., ;. 181)
*SONAJAS RITUALES EN LA CERAMICA MEJICANA
RITUAL RATTLES IN MEXICAN POTTERY
by Jose Alcina Franch
and
REVISTA DE INDIAS XLLL/54