Agriculture in Mesoamerica is a process based on the domestication of plants, initiated between ca. 7500 and 5000 BCE. To the present day, it remains one of the organizing axes of the economic, social, and ritual life of peoples of the Mesoamerican tradition. Its development profoundly transformed productive practices, giving rise to a technological system adapted to the diversity of landscapes, soils, and climates of each region. Within this context, agricultural tools played a central role by enabling the efficient management of territory, the production of food, and the material and symbolic reproduction of communities. Beyond their utilitarian function, these tools were endowed with meanings that reflected the close relationship among human, vegetal, and sacred processes.
Among the most widely used agricultural tools were the coa, or planting stick, the axe, and the hoe, among others, employed within the slash-and-burn system. During the period known as the “proto-agricultural” or “incipient agriculture” phase, it has been proposed that work tools consisted primarily of stone axes used for clearing and weeding, as well as the planting stick. This technology, which emerged at a very early date, has undergone few changes over time. The “basic” set of tools was adapted to different types of cultivation, the characteristics of the terrain, and the phases of the plant cycle, in order to provide plants with specific forms of treatment.
The planting stick (uitzoctli in Nahuatl) consists of a wooden staff hardened by fire and fitted with a sharpened point or, later, a metal tip. In pre-Hispanic times, it was made from hardwoods such as oak, mesquite, or holm oak. The coas (uictin, Nahuatl plural), for their part, were used to loosen the soil, prepare agricultural fields, and work particular crops. The term coa is thought to have originated in the Antilles and to have been introduced during the colonial period. Documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic sources identify at least three types of coa employed in intensive and medium-intensity agricultural systems: the leaf-bladed coa, the foot coa, and the zoomorphic-handled coa. The first resembled a shovel in form, and its use was not limited to agriculture. It could be made in one or two pieces, combining wood and copper, by attaching a flat triangular or half-heart-shaped metal blade to a staff.
The foot coa appears in the Florentine Codex as a wooden implement with a triangular blade set at a right angle to the handle, designed to be driven with the foot, much as it is today. Zoomorphic-handled coas (uictli axoquen, in Nahuatl) resembled short shovels composed of two parts: a point attached to a handle terminating in a carved figure, such as a monkey, dog, bird, or some sacred entity. During the colonial period, coas incorporated steel blades.
Axes were likewise essential in agricultural work, especially for clearing, weeding, and pruning, activities that could also be carried out manually. Today, the machete is widely used for weeding. The category of axe is broad and appears in contexts beyond agriculture, including woodcutting, maguey scraping, warfare, and toponymy; in general terms, it refers to an implement made of stone or metal. In Nahuatl, the term tepoztli appears in the name of Tepoztecatl, “he of the axe” (tepoztli, “that which cleaves”), and by extension in the ethnonym of his group. This deity is associated with pulque and with the felling of forests, the initial phase of the slash-and-burn system. In some representations, the god carries a stone or copper axe known as a tepuztli.
In colonial sources, tepoztli is used generically to designate “metal” or “iron,” while tlaltepoztli is translated as hoe or mattock. It should be noted that the hoe and other tools, including shovels, axes, billhooks, sickles, scythes, and machetes, were European introductions that were rapidly integrated as effective implements for every phase of the productive cycle: land preparation, planting, weeding, and harvesting. The use of the term tlaltepoztli for the hoe suggests a process of neologism or semantic extension that may have encompassed various metal agricultural tools. Beyond questions of terminology, pre-Hispanic axes were made of stone or copper and fitted into wooden handles; both in pre-Hispanic and colonial times these tools were also used as weapons. Greenstone axes were particularly prized in southern Mesoamerica for the quality of their manufacture.
Other agricultural tools included the clearing tool (tlachichiconi, in Nahuatl), as well as the wooden hook or forked stick, still in use today, which allows vegetation to be handled without direct contact and facilitates cutting with an axe or machete. With the introduction of crops such as bananas and sugarcane, pruning tools were incorporated to facilitate leaf removal and pruning. Today, the short desjarretadera - a steel implement with a hook and blade at its upper end, mounted on a long handle - is sold in local markets and widely used for crop maintenance and, in some cases, for transplanting vegetables.
The importance of agricultural tools is evident in several dimensions of everyday life, since their production and maintenance involved networks of artisanal specialization, regional exchange, and community cooperation. These tools were often passed down from generation to generation, becoming objects of great symbolic value that condensed the memory of the lineage and the continuity of agricultural labor, as evidenced by the will of Don Gabriel de San Antonio (recorded in 1602 in Xochimilco), who bequeathed hoes (tlaltepoztli) to his children.