With funding from the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary team of researchers including Dr. Heather McKillop and colleagues Dr. Karen McKee and Dr. Harry Roberts from Louisiana State University, and Dr. Terance Winemiller of Auburn University Montgomery will carry out 3 seasons of archaeological fieldwork on the ancient Maya salt industry. They will excavate a site submerged by sea-level rise in a peat bog below the seafloor in Belize, where the peat has preserved wooden buildings and artifacts. Salt, a basic biological necessity for human life, is not available everywhere. In antiquity, hunting and gathering societies generally obtained enough salt from wild animal meat and plants, but with the rise of agriculture, permanent villages, and dense populations of cities, access to salt became a concern, when demand exceeded supply. Historically and prehistorically worldwide, salt has been collected from salt mining, solar evaporation, and brine boiling. At times, ancient states controlled the production and distribution of salt by assigning state administrators at salt works, or by levying a salt tax as in the Han Dynasty in China or among the Aztecs. Salt caravans traversed the desert in Africa, where salt and gold were equivalencies. The word 'salt' derives from the Roman Empire's use of salt as salary for soldiers. The researchers will investigate the infrastructure of ancient Maya salt production and the implications for supplying salt to the inland Maya Classic period cities where salt was arguably in short supply. The research will provide additional data on the timing and rate of actual sea-level rise and subsidence-- a sobering reminder of the impact of sea-level rise on coastal communities worldwide.
The researchers will use remote sensing in an automated vessel designed for shallow water to record the sea floor and search for buried remains. They will excavate wooden structures, areas of briquetage--pots used to boil brine over fires to make salt, and wooden structures used in concentrating the brine before the boiling process. They will excavate shallow sites using cofferdams and deeper sites by diving. Artifact conservation of artifacts will begin on site. They will reconstruct the ancient landscape with sediment coring across the lagoon system. The data will be integrated within a GIS, including 3D imaging and visualization.
Some of the broader impacts include training graduate students using GIS and other advanced technology, and bringing experts from different disciplines where the same issues are addressed separately. The research underscores the environmental changes that submerge coastal areas subject to modern development. The knowledge of the ancient salt industry and the wooden architecture will have a broader impact on education in schools in Belize, information available for archaeological tourism in Belize, and for understanding of the wooden architecture of the ancient Maya which surely formed the majority of buildings as it does in traditional modern Maya villages.
The intellectual merit of the research includes investigating ancient Maya wooden architecture, evaluating the Classic Maya salt industry, and explicating vegetation and sea level changes and their impact on people. The Paynes Creek wooden structures provide a key to documenting ancient wooden buildings, to evaluating analogies with modern structures, and for providing analogues for other ancient sites.
The excavation of submerged archaeological sites in a shallow salt-water lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park on the southern coast of Belize documented the only known ancient Maya wooden buildings. Wooden architecture of the Maya was previously only known from modern descendants’ houses, because wood normally decays in the tropical landscape of Central America. As well as being significant in documenting wooden posts defining rectangular structures, the buildings were important because they formed part of the infrastructure of the ancient Maya salt industry. Salt, a basic biological necessity, was scarce at inland cities where the Classic Maya civilization developed between A.D. 300 and 900. Excavations at 10 salt works in Paynes Creek identified salt production by evaporating brine in pots over fires to produce loose salt. Evidence of the infrastructure of transportation of salt was provided by recovery of one complete ancient Maya canoe paddle and 3 fragmentary paddles, all radiocarbon dated to the Classic period. In addition, the only known ancient Maya canoe was investigated in 2013 at Site 67. The Paynes Creek salt works are significant because they suggest the Maya economy was more complex than the traditional view of a political economy of exotic and highly-crafted goods controlled by the dynastic Maya at inland cities, versus the domestic economy of subsistence items produced within households for local distribution. In contrast, the Paynes Creek salt works were factories where people lived elsewhere, producing a product for inland distribution. That the economy of the ancient Maya was more complex than the traditional view of a political versus domestic economy has broader implications for our understanding of the production and distribution of other goods and resources among the ancient Maya and other ancient complex societies. The intellectual merit of the project is based on our understanding of the independent workshops where ancient Maya who lived elsewhere came to work to produce salt, a basic daily biological necessity. The exceptional preservation of wooden structures was due to rising seas that buried the buildings and other remains in red mangrove peat (Rhizophora mangle), that is an indicator of actual sea-level rise. Sediment coring in the lagoon system, along with the identification of vegetation patterns from plant remains in the core and pollen identified to plant species, indicates a drier landscape when the salt works were in use. The complex interplay between cultural and environmental factors in cultural changes in the past in this low-lying coastal landscape provides a valuable analog for low-lying coastal populations world-wide: In the case of the Paynes Creek salt works, the demand for salt increased over the course of the Classic period rise of inland cities, resulting in an expansion of the number and size of salt works on the coast. When the inland dynastic cities collapsed about A.D. 900, the salt works were abandoned, for lack of customers. As sea-level rose during the Classic period, the salt workers shored up their salt works using palmetto palm posts driven into the edge of land, as is practiced today in Belize. The broader impacts of the NSF project include 3D imaging of artifacts and wooden posts to digitally preserve and record the remains that were waterlogged and subject to decay. Moreover, the project included creation of 3D printed replicas of artifacts, some of which were used to create permanent exhibits in Belize—obviating the need for local communities to request loan of actual artifacts or provide security for real artifacts. The utility of 3D imaging and 3D printing for education, public outreach, and for sustainable archaeological tourism in the nearby communities to the Paynes Creek salt works provides a measure of protection for the underwater sites, since the local communities are invested in protecting the cultural resources that form part of their tourism economy. Broader impacts for the project also include instruction for undergraduates and graduate students in field and laboratory techniques, notably total station mapping and creation of GIS maps, as well as 3D imaging and 3D printing at the LSU Digital Imaging and Visualization in Archaeology (DIVA) lab at LSU. The training in 3D technology provides an edge for undergraduate students pursuing graduate studies in archaeology and other areas of science.
