We show that an aperiodic minimal tiling space with only finitely many asymptotic composants embeds in a surface if and only if it is the suspension of a symbolic interval exchange transformation (possibly with reversals). We give two necessary conditions for an aperiodic primitive substitution tiling space to embed in a surface. In the case of substitutions on two symbols our classification is nearly complete. The results characterize the codimension one hyperbolic attractors of surface diffeomorphisms in terms of asymptotic composants of substitutions.