Identifying Salt Cakes as Commodities in the Classic Maya Marketplace Economy

Summary

This is an abstract from the "An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Production of salt cakes for trade in modern and historic communities provides three testable hypotheses for identifying ancient Maya trade of this commodity. If salt cakes were transported in pots as in the Philippines, briquetage would be found at consumer communities, as suggested for Aventura, Belize. Only non-vessel briquetage, including supports and oven furniture would be at the salt kitchen. In contrast, if brine-boiling pots were broken and discarded at the salt kitchens, with salt cakes traded to regional marketplaces, as at the Maya highland salt works at Sacapulas and San Mateo Ixtatan, there would be no ceramic evidence of salt trade at marketplaces. If the salt cakes were wrapped in leaves as depicted on the Calakmul mural of a salt vendor, organic residue might remain. If wet salt was removed from brine-boiling pots and placed into forms, as at Ixtapa and Sacapulas, the size and number of the brine-boiling pots would not reflect the size and number of the units of hardened salt. With brine-boiling pottery and oven furniture comprising 90%–98% of the pottery at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, the model of hardened salt cakes removed from the brine-boiling vessels is supported.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• An Exchange of Ideas: Recent Research on Maya Commodities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36079.0