These ceramic stamps from the SRJC Multicultural Museum Collection come from the Aztec empire in Mexico from around 1000 AD/CE. These stamps were used to impress designs onto amate paper, fabric, pottery, and possibly skin. Stamps were originally hand-formed, but eventually (around 1150 AD) the Aztec began to use molds to make multiple copies of the same stamp. The designs on these stamps encompassed animals, people, plants, and religious/metaphysical motifs. In the Aztec culture, only wealthy and elite individuals called scribes were taught to write and make art, so it is believed that only the scribes made and distributed the stamps initially; stamping was an elite mark for valuable and luxurious objects. The scribes also could have had their own unique stamps they used as signatures. After the stamps started being made using molds, more common Aztec people could use them, and using them on clothing became a larger trend. Archeologists found many of the stamps in the ruins of temples and pyramids in the Tehacuan Valley in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan, around modern-day Mexico City.