Exploring the lateral wings of Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology, I found a small display with an anthropomorphic figure on a small wooden pedestal, next to a couple of ceramic vases. It looked different from the pieces I had seen in other halls, where Mexican archaeology surprises by both the scale and the pristine quality of the stone surfaces. On the contrary, these small and modest objects were splattered with red stains the color of human blood. The cultures occupying the zone that now is the state of Mexico mined for iron in Huahuaxtla and Huitzuco (in the neighboring state of Guerrero). They transported it back to their cities in heavy, large flagons. By macerating mineral fragments with stone mortars, the iron was reduced to a thin dust to be scattered over ritual and funerary objects, with the purpose of infusing their deceased ones with life beyond their earthly existence. The archaeological site where the blood-stained pieces were retrieved is in the state of Mexico, which is also the site for the extraction of tezontle: a volcanic rock made from magma, cooled down by millenary processes, porous like a sponge, red like the ritual figurines animating the dead. [...]
Tezontle
in ENCYCLOPEDIA