Recent in-depth research on the Nahua Corpus Xolotl, as well as on a large variety of compatible sources, has led to new insights on what were “boundaries” in preconquest Nahua thought. The present article proposes that our modern Western concept of borders and political boundaries was foreign to ancient Mexican societies and to Aztec-era polities in general. Consequently, the article aims to add a novel angle to our understanding of the notions of space, territoriality, and limits in the indigenous worldview in central Mexico during preconquest times, and their repercussions for the internal social and political relations that evolved within the Nahua-Acolhua ethnic states (altepetl). Furthermore, taking its cue from the Corpus Xolotl, the article reconsiders the validity of ethnic entities and polities in ancient Mexico and claims that many of these polities were ethnic and territorial amalgams, in which components of ethnic outsiders formed internal enclaves and powerbases. I argue that in ancient Mexico one is able to observe yet another kind of conceptualization of borders/frontiers: “enclosures with inclusion,” which served as the indigenous concept of porous and inclusive boundaries, well up to the era of the formation of the so-called Triple Alliance, and beyond.

最近对 Nahua 语料库 Xolotl 以及大量兼容来源的深入研究，导致了对征服前 Nahua 思想中“边界”的新见解。本文提出，我们现代西方的边界和政治边界概念对于古代墨西哥社会和阿兹特克时代的一般政治来说是陌生的。因此，这篇文章旨在为我们理解征服前墨西哥中部土著世界观中的空间、领土和限制的概念，以及它们对纳瓦内部社会和政治关系的影响增加一个新的角度。 Acolhua 民族国家 ( altepetl). 此外，从 Corpus Xolotl 中汲取灵感，这篇文章重新考虑了古代墨西哥种族实体和政治的有效性，并声称许多这些政治是种族和领土的混合物，其中种族外来者的组成部分形成了内部飞地和权力基地。我认为，在古代墨西哥，人们能够观察到另一种边界/边疆的概念化：“包容的圈地”，这是多孔和包容性边界的本土概念，一直到 so 形成的时代-所谓的三重联盟，甚至更多。