Other Artifacts

Other Artifacts. Aztalan National Historic Landmark. While pottery and stone tools are the most common and durable artifacts found at Aztalan, other items were crafted of animal bone, shell, and copper. Shell was fashioned into spoons, pendants, and beads, and native copper was used to make fishhooks, beads, and earspool coverings., Hollow and light weight bird bones were made into flutes and used for ornamentation. Harder and more solid deer bone was worked to create awls, bone needles, and other tools. Fibers from tree bark and other plants were used to make clothing, bags, netting and other items., Plant materials were also mixed as a binder with clay and used like plaster to coat the outside of houses and stockade walls. When the structures burned, the fire would bake the plaster into a hard, brick-like material. Visitors to the site in the mid-1800s misidentified the baked blaster as mud bricks. Today this material is known to archaeologists as "Aztalan brick"., Photo caption: Bone awls and copper pendant "maskettes" (above), shell beads (top right), and ear spools (lower right); not to scale.