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The New Fire ceremony (in Nahuatl xiuhmolpilli—the Binding of the Years) was an Aztec ceremony performed once every 52 years — a full cycle of the Aztec calendar— in order to stave off the end of the world.
The first Aztec New Fire ceremony described in ethnohistorical sources was in 1090, according to the Mapa Sigüenza. But there is evidence of New Fire ceremonies having been celebrated in civilizations other and earlier than the Aztecs, for example at Xochicalco in the 6th century. According to Bernardino de Sahagún, the last New Fire ceremony was held in 1507; the tradition started and ended with the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1519–1521.
The fact that New Fire ceremonies had been celebrated before the rise of the Aztec empire suggests that the Aztecs had inherited the ceremony from earlier civilizations of central Mexico and that it was not an original Aztec invention. The Anales de Tlatelolco mention that the Aztecs upon achieving independence of the Tepanec state celebrated a New Fire ceremony that marked the beginning of the calendric count of the Aztecs. This suggests that the ceremony was also used as a dynastic foundation rite.
Archaeology
It has been proposed that archaeological evidence of New Fire ceremonies can be found in the shape of dumps of pottery and households utensils discarded in the initial stage of the celebration. The idea was first proposed by George C. Vaillant in the 1930s but his model was criticized as theoretically unfounded and abandoned. In 2001 Elson and Smith rethought the proposal in light of the findings of several ceramic dumps that seemed to match the idea of what remains of New Fire ceremony would look like. They conclude that New Fire ceremonies were held throughout the Aztec sphere of influence and had a distinct importance at both the local level of each household and in the larger political level of the state religion.