Archaeological, historical, and ethnographic/anthropological evidence for salt production is particularly abundant and covers most of the globe. We sampled a few cases (Philippines, Bali, India) that show the ingenuity that is invested in salt harvesting and processing methods:
Research on sea salt led to some fascinating synthetic works on salt history that illustrate not only human ingenuity in managing to acquire this precious substance but also its pivotal role in human political and economic history. Here we suggest two of the most read and appreciated ones:
Kurlansky, M. 2002. Salt: A World History, Alfred A. Knopf Canada.
Multhauf, R. 1996. Neptune’s Gift: A History of Common Salt. John Hopkins University Press.
A wonderful description and photographic documentation of salt cultivation on the island of Kythera can be found in the following article by Miranta Ioannou:
“The last alikarii of Kythera” PROPAGANDA, 30.03.2019, https://popaganda.gr/stories/alikarii-ton-kithiron/), and also in another article By Athenian and Macedonian News Agencies
Also a brief description of the life of female sea salt workers on the island of Lefkas and some wonderful photographs by Kostas Balafas is presented in the following: https://www.news247.gr/magazine/mia-eikona-1000-lexeis-oi-kariatides-tis-lefkadas/
The unique find of Minoan salt at Zakros, Crete has been published in detail in the follwowing paper:
Kopaka, K., & Chaniotakis, N. 2003. Just taste additive? Bronze age salt from Zakros, Crete. Oxford journal of archaeology, 22(1), 53-66.
For Mesopotanian sea salt production see the foundational article by Daniel Potts:
Potts, D. (1984). On salt and salt gathering in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient/Journal de l’histoire economique et sociale de l’Orient, 225-271.
For a broader view, read about contemporary and earlier production and trade is salt from inland sources in Central Anatolia in:
Dardeniz, G. (2023). A Model of Salt Production and Consumption Patterns in Bronze Age Anatolia. European Journal of Archaeology, 26(1), 39-56.
A lot of fascinating research on historical and traditional salt production in Greece is presented in:
Ανώνυμος, 2001. Το Ελληνικό Αλάτι, Πρακτικά Η΄ τριήμερου εργασίας, Μυτιλήνη, 6-8 Νοεμβρίου 1998, 2001, Αθήνα, Πολιτιστικό Τεχνολογικό Ίδρυμα ΕΤΒΑ.
Theodora Petanidou’s bilingual album is a wonderfuly rich source of information on the history of salt production in Greece:
Petanidou T. 1997. Salt – Salt in European History and Civilization, Hellenic Saltworks S.A., Athens.
On the the dispersal of sea salt from the coast to the hintderland through the trade in salted fish in Eastern Mediterranean antiquity see the following:
Van Neer, W., Lernau, O., Friedman, R., Mumford, G., Poblóme, J., & Waelkens, M. 2004. Fish remains from archaeological sites as indicators of former trade connections in the Eastern Mediterranean. Paléorient, 101-147.
Also the most recent paper for such a dispersal in Israel:
Blevis, R., Bar-Oz, G., Tepper, Y., & Zohar, I. 2021. Fish in the desert: identifying fish trade routes and the role of Red Sea parrotfish (Scaridae) during the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 36, 102808.
A very good introduction to the large scale salt production and its economic and political ramifications during the Roman period is given by classisist Analisa Marzano in the following paper:
Marzano, A. (2024). Marine salt production in the Roman world: The salinae and their ownership. Quaternary Science Reviews, 336, 108776.
We have previously discussed the rich culinary literature in Arabic of the Islamicate world, and the fabulous Abbasid and post-Abbasid cookbooks (10-14th century), which are now available in handy English translations. Here we used only Nawal Nasrallah’s excellent publication of the earliest of these works:
Nasrallah, Nawal (ed.) (2007). Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens: Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq’s Tenth Century Baghdadi Cookbook. Brill.
We are novices in the study of salt production in India, and have not even touched upon its fascinating role in the Indian anti-colonial struggle and Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance movement. We were delighted and greatly inspired by the Tamil poetry published online, with extremely helpful and accessible lexical notes, by literary scholar Vaidehi Herbert and urge everyone to explore this literature’s delights: