The professor of the Department of Geography and Anthropology at the University of Louisiana Heather McKillop, a specialist in the Mayan world, and her team have been studying the archaeological site of Ek Way Nal, in the Payne's Creek National Park, in Belize for a few years. . There they have excavated buildings made of posts and straw preserved in oxygen-free sediments at the bottom of the sea, in whose kitchens the ancient Mayans produced brine (water with a concentration of dissolved salt greater than five percent) in clay pots. But the place where the salineros who worked here lived had been quite elusive to date for archaeologists.
At the Ek Way Nal archaeological site in Belize's Paynes Creek National Park, archaeologists have excavated poles and straw buildings preserved in oxygen-free sediments at the bottom of the sea, in whose kitchens brine was produced in clay pots.
In a recent article in which Cory Sills, a student at the University of Louisiana, has collaborated, entitled "Briquetting and brining: living and working in the salt flats of Ek Way Nal, Belize", and which has been published in the magazine Ancient Mesoamerica, McKillop collects new data on the salt industry and how it was organized to supply this basic food product to the Mayan cities of the interior during the Classic Period (250-900 AD). This project has been funded by the National Science Foundation.
WHERE DID THE SALINEROS LIVE?
McKillop, Sills and their team have investigated Ek Way Nal in search of the homes of the salineros in order to understand how salt was produced in this place, since the coast of Belize, along with some settlements in the Yucatan Peninsula , in Mexico, it was one of the main salt producers. Although field work at Ek Way Nal has been postponed since March 2020 due to the pandemic, to continue their work the researchers used material collected from previous excavations for study in the university's archeology laboratory. The material included hundreds of wood samples from posts and straw constructions, as well as some ceramic pots. "The archeology lab looks like a tupperware party, with hundreds of plastic containers of water, but that's how the wood samples are kept moist so they don't dry out or deteriorate," jokes McKillop.
To continue their work, the researchers turned to material collected from previous excavations for study in the laboratory. The material included hundreds of wood samples from posts and straw constructions, as well as ceramic pots.
The researcher explained the strategy followed by the team for their research in the laboratory: "I decided to send a sample of a wooden pole from each building in Ek Way Nal to be radiocarbon dated. The intention was to check if they were all from the same period. ". When the results began to come in, two at a time, McKillop identified a sequence of building construction that began in the Late Classic (800-900 AD), at the height of Mayan civilization, and continued through the Terminal Classic, when the Dynastic leaders of the inner city-states were already losing political control of their cities, which were finally abandoned by AD 900.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MODELS
According to McKillop, to carry out the study "we used as a model the archaeological site of Sacapulas, in Guatemala, which has been very well studied, a place where utensils for boiling brine in salt kitchens, a house, as well as evidence of the practice of other activities, including salting fish ". In the article that the research team has published in Ancient Mesoamerica, it is reported the construction sequence in Ek Way Nal of a building divided into three zones that contained several salt kitchens, at least one residence and an outdoor area. Thanks to the find, the researchers have managed to establish a specific chronology for Ek Way Nal that is beginning to be used in other archaeological sites.
In the article that the research team has published, it is reported the construction sequence in Ek Way Nal of a building divided into three zones that contained several salt kitchens, at least one residence and an outdoor area.
