Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya

Maya Studies

by Heather McKillop

"McKillop has completed a remarkable task in bringing out significant new data concerning ancient Maya salt making. The implications of environmental exploitation, technological development, and economic possibilities provide the opportunity to revisit these issues on more solid ground."--Fred Valdez Jr., University of Texas, Austin "Long-accepted ideas about Late Classic activities and the role of coastal communities in supporting Late Classic society--even the society of Tikal and the Peten--will now have to change as the result of McKillop’s findings."--Elizabeth Graham, University College London In White Gold of the Ancient Maya , Heather McKillop reports the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of Late Classic Maya salt works on the coast of Belize, transforming our knowledge of the Maya salt trade and craft specialization while providing new insights on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene as well.  Salt, basic to human existence, was scarce in the tropical rainforests of Belize and Guatemala, where the Classic Maya civilization thrived between A.D. 300 and 900. The prevailing interpretation has been that salt was imported from the north coast of the Yucatan. However, the underwater discovery and excavation of salt works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon demonstrate that the Maya produced salt by boiling brine in pots over fires at specialized workshops on the Belizean coast. The Punta Ycacos salt works are clear evidence that craft specialization took place in a nondomestic setting and that production occurred away from the economic and political power of the urban Maya rulers, thus providing new clues to the Maya economy and sea trade.  McKillop also presents new data on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene that extend geologists' and geographers' sea-level curves from earlier eras. Likewise, she enters the environmental-versus-cultural debate over the Classic Maya collapse by evaluating the factors that led to the abandonment of the Punta Ycacos salt works at the end of the Classic Period, synonymous with the abandonment of inland Maya cities. Heather McKillop is associate professor of anthropology at Louisiana State University.

Genres: History

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2002

About the author

Heather Irene McKillop is a Canadian-American archaeologist, academic, and Maya scholar, noted in particular for her research into ancient Maya coastal trade routes, seafaring, littoral archaeology, and the long-distance exchange of commodities in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Reviews

[Charles Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to read archaeological survey of salt production in the southern Maya lowlands of Yucatan and Belize. The southern lowlands were linked vertically and horizontally to Maya political centers of the Late Classic period, and not dependent upon salt from the northern lowland centers of the Post Classic, like Chichen Itza. Humans have a biological need, and have acquired an "appetite," for salt.

Specialized production took place outside the household, and during the dry season. The Maya used two methods, sal cocido (cooked salt; dehydration of saltwater in kettles over fire) and sal solar(salt pans on shore dehydrated by solar energy), though the former was prevalent in southern lowlands, while use of the latter is not evidenced and was likely unnecessary.

This is an interesting book that sheds further light on Maya craft production, social organization, and trade. Many Maya coastal sites are now submerged and provide a cautionary tale of global warming's effects on littoral population zones.