The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico: An Archaeological Ethnography 9780915703517, 9781949098808

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Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan Number 92

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico An Archaeological Ethnography

Jeffrey R. Parsons

Ann Arbor, Michigan 2001

©2001 by the Regents of the University of Michigan The Museum of Anthropology All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-915703-51-7 (paper) ISBN 978-1-949098-80-8 (ebook) Cover design by Katherine Clahassey The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology currently publishes three monograph series, Anthropological Papers, Memoirs, and Technical Reports, as well as an electronic series in CD-ROM form. For a complete catalog, write to Museum of Anthropology Publications, 4009 Museums Building, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parsons, Jeffrey R. The last saltmakers of nexquipayac, Mexico : an archaeological ethnography/ Jeffrey R. Parsons. p. cm. -- (Anthropological papers/ Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan; no. 92) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-915703-51-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) I. Indians of Mexico--Industries--Mexico--Nexquipayac. 2. Nahuas--Industries. 3. Salt industry and trade--Mexico--Nexquipayac. 4. Salt industry and trade-­ Mexico--Mexico, Valley of. 5. Ethnoarchaeology--Mexico. 6. Indians of Mexico-­ Mexico--Mexico, Valley of--Antiquities. 7. Mexico, Valley of (Mexico)--Antiquities. 8. Nexquipayac (Mexico)--Economic conditions. I. Title. II. Anthropological papers (University of Michigan. Museum of Anthropology); no. 92. GN2 .MS no. 92 972' .5--dc21

2001044146

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the ANSI Standard 239.481984 (Permanence of Paper)

Contents List of figures, vii List of tables, viii List of plates, ix Preface, xiii Acknowledgments, xv

Chapter 1: Introduction, 1 General Background, 1 The Physiological Basis for Salt Consumption, 3 Salt and Saitmaking in Mesoamerica and the Valley of Mexico, 5 The Scope of This Monograph, 8 The Local Setting, 10 The Organization of This Monograph, 12 Chapter 2: SaItmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988, 15 Synopsis of the Saltmaking Process, 15 The Workshops: Facilities and Implements, 24 The SN Workshop, 24 The Permanent Features, 27 The Portable Contents, 28 The IC Workshop, 43 The Eastern Sub-Area, 48 The Western Sub-Area, 55 The Central Sub-Area, 57 The MC Workshop, 59 The Soils Used in Saltmaking: Types and Sources, 59 Lakeshore Soils, 60 Leached Workshop Soils, 62 The Lakeshore Sources, 64 Ash Deposits Used in Saltmaking, 75 Collecting and Transporting the Soils, 76 The SN Strategy: Combination of Truck and Cart, 75 The IC Strategy: Exclusive Reliance on Burro Cart, 77 Hauling Soil in the 1930s and 1940s, 79 Storing Soils at the Workshop, 82 Mixing the Soils to Be Loaded into the Pilas, 83

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The SN Workshop: Preparing the Sal Blanca Mixture, 83 The SN Workshop: Preparing the Sal Negra Mixture, 91 The IC Workshop: Preparing the Sal Blanca Mixture, 91 The IC Workshop: Preparing the Sal Negra Mixture, 93 Pilas: Preparation, Use, and Maintenance, 94 Preparing a New Pila, 94 Loading the Soil Mixture, 96 The Leaching Process, 107 Cleaning Out the Pila Pit, 112 Boiling Hut Operations, 113 Boiling the Agua Salada: Sal Blanca, 113 Boiling the Agua Salada: Sal Negra and Salitre, 122 Drying the Salt: Sal Blanca, 123 Drying the Salt: Sal Negra, 128 Salitre Crystallization and Drying, 129 Fuel Operations, 130 The Present, 130 Pre-1960s, 131 Distributing the Salt, 134 The Present, 134 The 1930s and 1940s, 136 Summary and Conclusions, 136 Sources of Soil and Water, 137 Workshop Features and Implements, 140 Recycling Soil, 140 Expertise and Knowledge, 141 Fuel Costs, 142 The Uses of Salt, 143 Chapter 3: Saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico, 1500-1920, 145 The Geochemistry of Tequesquite in and around Lake Texcoco, 145 The Changing Needs for Salt during the First Posthispanic Century, 151 Documented Salt Use in the Valley of Mexico on the Eve of Spanish Contact, 153 The Triple Alliance Tribute, 153 Eye-Witness Accounts from the Valley of Mexico, 154 The Posthispanic Sixteenth-Century Documentary Sources, 155 Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, The Florentine Codex. 155 The Relaciones Geograficas, 158 Other Sixteenth-Century Accounts, 161 The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 164 The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, 165 Summary and Conclusions, 173

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Chapter 4: SaItmaking in Mesoamerica outside the Valley of Mexico, 1500-1920,177 Marine Coastal Lagoons, 178 Inland Salt Springs, 183 Inland Salt Lakes, 187 Summary and Conclusions, 190 Chapter 5: Worldwide Comparative Perspectives, 195 Technological Variability, 195 Minimalist Salt-Harvesting Techniques, 195 Transport, Boiling, and Storage in the Workshop, 199 Preparation of Salt "Gardens," 202 Solar Evaporation, 205 Brine Boiling, 211 Fuel Problems, 214 Leaching Devices and Procedures, 215 The Use of Salty Brine in Cooking and Seasoning Food, 218 Making Different Types of Salt, 218 Drying and Cleaning Salt, 219 Packaging, Storing, and Transporting Finished Salt, 219 Rainy Season Saltmaking, 221 Leaching the Ashes of Salt-Rich Plants, 222 Collecting Precipitated Salt from Salt-Rich Plants, 226 Quantitative Input-Output Data, 227 Settlement Patterns, 229 The Complementarity of Saltmaking and Agriculture, 229 The Association between Saltmaking and Pottery Making, 230 The Scale and Organization of Traditional Saltmaking, 231 The Sociopolitical Implications of Salt Production, Distribution, and Consumption, 232 Overall Conclusions, 234 Chapter 6: The Association between Saltmaking and Textile Dyeing, 241 The Preparation of Mordant Ash and Brine in West Africa, 242 The Use of Salt and Tequesquite in Traditional Mexican Cloth Dyeing, 246 Summary and Conclusions, 248 Chapter 7: The Archaeology of Traditional Saltmaking, 249 The Valley of Mexico, 249 The Significance of Fabric-Marked Pottery, 249 Pre-Middle Postclassic Saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico, 259 Summary and Conclusions, 266

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Other Parts of Mesoamerica, 267 Location and Appearance of Saltmaking Sites, 267 Non-Movable Ceramic and Masonry Containers, 268 Ceramic Assemblages, 269 Changes in Saltmaking over Time, 273 Summary and Conclusions, 276 North America, 277 South America, 280 Europe, 281 Briquetage and "Red Hill" Sites, 282 A Reconstruction of Saltmaking at Briquetage Sites, 284 The Seasonality and Specialization of Iron Age Saltmaking at Briquetage Sites, 285 Changes in European Saltmaking during the Later Iron Age, 287 Technological and Organizational Changes in Saltmaking during Roman and Post-Roman Times, 288 Africa, 289 Asia, 290 Overall Summary and Conclusions, 291

Chapter 8: Conclusions, 293 Potentially Appropriate Saltmaking Techniques in the Valley of Mexico, 294 The Use of Brine for Flavoring and Cooking Foods, 294 The Use of Plant Ash vs. Crystalline Salt, 295 Harvesting Natural Tequesquite during the Dry Season, 296 Simple Solar Evaporation: Replicating and Extending Nature, 297 Intensified Solar Evaporation, 299 Specialized Year-Round Saltmaking, 300 The Infrastructure of Saltmaking, 300 The Geopolitics of Salt, 302 A Hypothetical Developmental Scenario, 306 Stage 1: The Early, Middle, and Late Formative, ca. 900-250 B.C., 306 Stage 2: The Early Terminal Formative, ca. 250-50 B.C., 306 Stage 3: The Late Terminal Formative, Classic, and Epiclassic, ca. 50 B.C.A.D. 900, 307 Stage 4: The Early Postclassic, ca. A.D. 900-1100, 307 Stage 5: The Middle and Late Postclassic, ca. A.D. 1100-1520,307 Future Research Directions, 308 Epilogue: Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1998,3]] Glossary, 313 Bibliography, 315

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Figures 1.1. Mexico and Central America, showing places mentioned in text, 2 1.2. The Valley of Mexico, 4 1.3. Prehispanic chronology in the Valley of Mexico, 10 2.1. Plan of the immediate Nexquipayac area, 16 2.2. SN Workshop, plan, 21 2.3. SN Workshop, pilas in cross-section, 29 2.4. SN Workshop, boiling hut plan, 30 2.5. SN Workshop, hard-rubber scrapers, 30 2.6. SN Workshop, ceramic jar formerly used as a brine receptacle, 30 2.7. IC Workshop, plan, 44 2.8. IC Workshop, pilas in cross-section, 45 2.9. IC Workshop, hard-rubber scrapers, 50 2.10. IC Workshop, boiling hut plan, 51 2.11. MC Workshop, plan, 57 3.1. Illustration of sixteenth century saIt seller in market, 157 5.1. World map showing places mentioned in text, 196 6.1. Nigerian dye-making: furnace for preparing mordant ash, 243 6.2. Nigerian dye-making: pots for preparing mordant water, 244 7.1. Texcoco Fabric-Marked vessel found by Holmes in 1884,251 7.2. Saltmaking features at Tonanitla, southern Lake Xaltocan, 256 7.3. Walled features at the EI Tepalcate site, 263 7.4. Use of cylinders, spacers, and sockets in brine boiling, 270 7.5. European "goblet" salt molds, 286 8.1. Use of wooden shovel-like tools in sixteenth century maguey cultivation, 298

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Tables 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6. 7.7. 7.8. 8.1.

SN Workshop, weights of soil loaded into pilas, 95 SN Workshop, output of dried salt, 123 Predicted archaeological manifestations of prehispanic salt production, 138 Average compositions of Lake Texcoco tequesquite, 146 Analyses of seven tequesquite samples from Lake Texcoco, 146 Relative water salinity in Lake Texcoco, 146 Analysis of salt and soda content of water from Lake Texcoco, 147 Categories of harvested tequesquite, 147 Surface areas of lakes in the Valley of Mexico, beginning of nineteenth century, 150 Lake measurements in 1866, 150 Area:volume relationships in solar evaporation basins, 209 Salt:brine:firewood ratio at a saltmaking workshop, 228 Salt:brine ratio at a saltmaking workshop, 228 Worker:output ratios, 228 Camel transport needs, 228 Productivity in a typical Japanese salt garden, 228 Annual overhead costs in a typical Japanese salt garden, 228 TFM distribution, Pozo IX, Tlatelolco, 252 TFM distribution, Trench I, Culhuacan, 253 TFM distribution, Trench 2, Culhuacan, 253 TFM distribution, Pit I, Culhuacan, 254 TFM vessel forms, 255 Briquetage containers, 282 Briquetage non-containers, 283 Salt "goblet" dimensions over time, 287 Estimated salt requirements at different periods in the Valley of Mexico, 302

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Plates Cover photo. Saltmaker at Las Salinas in the 1930s, holding small wooden measure used for market sales of crystalline salt. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6.

Northeastern Lake Texcoco in 1954, 7 Facing southeast across southern Lake Texcoco in the late 1930s, 8 Nexquipayac and Las Salinas in 1954, 11 Facing northwest toward general area of Las Salinas, 22 SN Workshop, scrap-rubber fuel pile, 22 SN Workshop, stored lakebed soil, 23 Facing northwest at residential compound northwest of SN workshop, 23 Facing northwest at east side of Cerro Tepotzingo, 24 SN Workshop in 1967, showing two separate boiling huts for sal blanca and sal negra operations, 31 2.7. SN Workshop, plastic containers, 31 2.8. SN Workshop, pila in operation, 32 2.9. SN Workshop, brine receptacles, 32 2.10. SN Workshop, dipping brine from large plastic barrel at front of boiling hut, 37 2.11. SN Workshop, pouring water into loaded pila, 37 2.12. SN Workshop, pottery vessel formerly used as brine receptacle, 38 2.13. lC Workshop, buried ceramic brine receptacle still in use, 38 2.14. Las Salinas saltmaking in 1930s, showing pila is use, 39 2.15. SN Workshop, boiling hut, 40 2.16. SN Workshop, central area, showing ash pile and lakeshore soil in bags, 40 2.17. SN Workshop, paila pan atop oven inside boiling hut, 46 2.18. SN Workshop, pile of rubber-scrap fuel inside boiling hut, 46 2.19. SN Workshop, large wooden mallet (maso) in use for preparing pila leaching pit, 47 2.20. IC Workshop, central area, with lakebed soil being unloaded from burro cart, 47 2.21. IC Workshop, stored lakebed soil, 53 2.22. IC Workshop, tool-storage area, 53 2.23. IC Workshop, knife and sharpening stone, 54 2.24. IC Workshop, boiling hut exterior, 54 2.25. MC Workshop, scrap-rubber fuel pile, 58 2.26. MC Workshop, boiling hut exterior, 58 2.27. SNWorkshop, digging out pilaclalli soil, 61 2.28. Near Las Salinas in the 1930s, collecting lakebed soil for saltmaking, 65 2.29. Near Las Salinas in the 1930s, collecting salt crusts from lakebed, 65 2.30. Near Las Salinas, at the San Ferdando soil source, 66 2.31. Near Las Salinas, digging soil at San Ferdando source, 66 2.32. Near Las Salinas, overlooking Tlateles de Tepectla lakebed soil source, 67 2.33. Near Las Salinas, at Tlateles de Tepectla lakebed soil source, 67 2.34. Tlateles de Tepecthi lakebed soil source, 68 2.35. Tlateles de Tepecthi: Middle Postclassic sherd scatter, 68 2.36. Tlateles de Tepectla: closeup of Middle Postclassic sherd scatter, 69 2.37. Near Las Salinas, overlooking Sta. Cecilia lakebed soil source, 72 2.38. Digging soil at Sta. Cecilia lakebed soil source, 72 2.39. Near Las Salinas, Madero lakebed soil source, 73 2.40. Remains of nineteenth-century saltmaking workshop on flanks of Cerro Tepetzingo, 73 2.41. Closeup of sherd scatter at base of soil bank at nineteenth-century saltmaking workshop, 74 2.42. Near Las Salinas, facing north at Cerro Huatepec, 74 2.43. Near Las Salinas, hauling soil on burro cart from Sta. Cecilia source, 78

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2.44. 2.45. 2.46. 2.47. 2.48. 2.49. 2.50. 2.51. 2.52. 2.53. 2.54. 2.55. 2.56. 2.57. 2.58. 2.59. 2.60. 2.61. 2.62. 2.63. 2.64. 2.65. 2.66. 2.67. 2.68. 2.69. 2.70. 2.71. 2.72. 2.73. 2.74. 2.75. 2.76. 2.77. 2.78. 2.79. 2.80. 2.81. 2.82. 2.83. 2.84. 2.85. 2.86. 2.87. 2.88. 2.89. 2.90. 2.91. 2.92. 2.93. 2.94. 2.95. 2.96. 2.97. 2.98. 2.99.

Near Las Salinas, digging soil at San Fernando source, 78 SN Workshop, stored lakebed soil, 80 Me Workshop, stored lakebed soil, 80 SN Workshop, bags of tequesquite soil at edge of mixing floor, 81 SN Workshop, breaking up soil clods in mixing operation, 84 SN Workshop, adding old brine to soil mixture, 84 SN Workshop, scooping out lakebed soil from storage pile, 85 SN Workshop, hauling soil from storage area to mixing floor, 85 SN Workshop, preparing soil for mixing, 86 SN Workshop, sweeping soil-storage area, 86 SN Workshop, mixing soil, 87 SN Workshop, pulverizing hard soil lumps in mixing operation, 87 SN Workshop, mixing soil, showing lateral movement of soil pile, 88 SN Workshop, sweeping mixing floor, 88 SN Workshop, flattening soil pile at end of mixing operation, 89 SN Workshop, covering mixed soil for overnight shelter, 89 Ie Workshop, mixing soil, 92 Ie Workshop, digging pilaclalli soil, 92 Ie Workshop, digging hornoclalli soil, 93 SN Workshop, preparing new pila, using wooden mallet to harden sides of pit, 97 SN Workshop, first stage of preparing new clay liner for pila pit, 97 SN Workshop, sloshing water in early stage of preparing new clay liner for a pila pit, 98 SN Workshop, using shovel to prepare new clay liner for a pila pit, 98 SN Workshop, using shovel to prepare new clay liner for a pila pit, 99 SN Workshop, using iron rod to punch hole for drip-tube in new pila, 99 SN Workshop, smoothing surface of clay liner with rubber scraper, 100 SN Workshop, making hole at base of pila into upper end of the drip-tube opening, 100 SN Workshop, cleaning pila surface with rubber scraper, 101 SN Workshop, cleaned pila ready for loading, showing ixtapepextle filtering cloth, 101 Ie Workshop, using grass-weed filter at base of pila, 102 SN Workshop, lining clean pila pit with coating of ash, 102 SN Workshop, scooping out mixed earth for loading into pila, 103 SN Workshop, loading mixed earth into pila, 103 SN Workshop, packing down mixed earth in pila, 104 SN Workshop, completion of packing down mixed earth in pila, 104 SN Workshop, adjusting soil inside pila in packing-down process, 105 Ie Workshop, packing down mixed earth in pila, with bare feet, 105 SN Workshop, dipping brine from one receptacle into another, 108 Las Salinas saltmaking in the 1930s, using ceramic vessels, 108 SN Workshop, removing leached soil from pila, 109 SN Workshop, removing leached soil from pila, 109 Ie Workshop, cleaning shovel with hard-rubber scraper, 110 Ie Workshop, using hard-rubber scraper to repair pila surface, 110 Ie Workshop, sloshing water onto pila surface to repair it after removal of leached soil, J11 Ie Workshop, using hard-rubber scraper to smooth repaired pila surface, J11 Ie Workshop, cleaning paila pan before next boiling operation, 114 SN Workshop, pouring fresh brine into paila at beginning of boiling process, 114 SN Workshop, putting fuel into stove under paila, near the beginning of a boiling operation, J15 SN Workshop, skimming boiling brine with jarilla frond, 115 SN Workshop, inserting piece of maguey penca into boiling brine, 116 SN Workshop, boiling brine with piece of maguey penca, 116 SN Workshop, area in front of stove in boiling hut, 117 SN Workshop, boiling brine about midway through boiling operation, 117 SN Workshop, using plywood board to move crystalline salt, 118 SN Workshop, crystalline salt piled at one side of paila, 118 SN Workshop, removing crystalline salt with plywood boards, 119

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2.100. SN Workshop, placing crystalline salt on drying bed in one corner of boiling hut, 119 2.101. Las Salinas in 1967, showing large paila then used for making sal negra, 124 2.102. SN Workshop: former process for testing boiled brine for making saltpeter (salitre), 124 2.103. SN Workshop, dumping soil to make a new drying bed inside boiling hut, 125 2.104. SN Workshop, preparing new drying bed inside boiling hut, 125 2.105. IC Workshop: spraying water from mouth in final stages of drying sal amarilla, 126 2.106. SN Workshop, scooping handfuls of dried salt from drying bed into carrying bucket, 126 2.107. SN Workshop: weekly output stored in house preparatory to sale from wheelbarrow, 127 2.108. SN Workshop: sal negra drying in basket, 127 2.109. IC Workshop: drying sal negra on workshop mixing floor, 130 2.110. Near Las Salinas: stream-bank vegetation formerly used by saltmakers as boiling fuel, 133 2.111. Las Salinas in 1967: piles of manure drying for use as boiling fuel, 133 2.112. Selling salt at Chinconcuac market in the 1930s, 135 3.1. Early twentieth-century plowed "fields" for tequesquite production in northwestern Lake Texcoco, 171 3.2. Tequesquite workers in the 1930s, somewhere in Lake Texcoco, 171 3.3. Early twentieth-century tequesquite production in northwestern Lake Texcoco, 172 3.4. Early twentieth-century harvested tequesquite awaiting railroad transport in northwestern Lake Texcoco, 173 4.1. Modern solar-evaporating ponds, Tehuacan Valley, Puebla, 185 5.1. Saltmaking in Nigeria: scraping the salt-charged soil surface, 199 5.2. Saltmaking in Nigeria: pouring salty earth into the leaching vessel, 200 5.3 Saltmaking in Nigeria: filtering salty soil, 201 5.4. Saltmaking in Nigeria: batteries of leaching vessels, 201 5.5. Saltmaking in Nigeria: batteries of leaching vessels, 203 5.6. Saltmaking in Nigeria: removing leached earth from leaching vessels, 204 5.7. Saltmaking at solar evaporation pans on the French coast, 206 5.8. Solar evaporating pans on the French coast, 206 5.9. Hard-molded salt cakes in a Nigerian market, 220 6.1. Nigerian dye-making: leaching vegetal material to prepare dye, 242 6.2. Nigerian dye-making: furnace for preparing mordant ash, 245 7.1. Sherds of Texcoco Fabric-Marked pottery, 250 7.2. Bulldozed saltmaking debris near Tonanitla, Lake Xaltocan, August 1996,258 7.3. Surface pottery at probable Early Postdassic saltmaking site near Tultepec, Lake Xaltocan, 258 7.4. The EI Tepalcate site ca. 1940, 260 7.5. Stone "heaps" at the EI Tepalcate site, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940,260 7.6. Close-up of stone "heap" at the El Tepalcate site, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940,262 7.7. Wall-like alignment of stones at the El Tepalcate site, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940, 262 7.8. Area of obsidian concentration at edge of EI Tepakate site, 264 7.9. Close-up of obsidian concentration at EI Tepalcate site, 264 8.1. Use of broad-bladed wooden planting tools near Texcoco, Mexico, in the 1930s, 296

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Preface During the 1960s I was involved in extended periods of archaeological fieldwork in the eastern Valley of Mexico. This was a time when rural life in this part of Mexico was still relatively "traditional," and I grew accustomed to seeing people working at many different agricultural and artisanal tasks that appeared decidedly "archaic" to me. Although my main interest was always focused on the archaeological remains that filled the landscape, I sensed, however subconsciously, that the people I saw working in the fields and villages I walked through were the inheritors of a cultural tradition deeply rooted in the precolumbian past. I knew that their ancestors had produced the mounds and potsherds that we mapped and collected. William Sanders (1957) had already demonstrated that the study of modern land use could help understand the prehistoric economy. I first became fully aware of saltmaking at Nexquipayac in the course of archaeological surveys that Thomas Charlton and I did around the northeastern margins of Lake Texcoco in 1963. More surveys along the eastern lakeshore in 1967 again brought me to Nexquipay&c. JoAn Moran, a University of Michigan graduate student who worked with us that year, spent a few days collecting ethnographic data on saltmaking there. She prepared a short report (Moran 1967) and we took some photographs. I filed that report away, and the years rolled on. By the mid 1980s it was time for me to serve a three-year term as Director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Administrative responsibilities during that period made it difficult for me to get away from Ann Arbor for any extended periods. Even worse, the uncertainties of University budgetary decisions made it difficult for me to predict, more than a week or two in advance, when I could actually leave the campus with a clear conscience. It became impossible for me to carry out the type of archaeological fieldwork that I had previously been accustomed to in Mexico and Peru. It was then that I remembered some of my youthful impressions of rural lifeways from the 1960s. I knew that life was changing in Mexico, and that many traditional activities were changing too. I thought that somebody should record some of the details of daily life that were literally vanishing before our eyes. I reasoned that small ethnographic studies could be done cheaply, quickly, with few people, and in conformance with the dictates of my unpredictable research timetable. Maguey utilization came to mind first, and my wife and I spent parts of two summers (1984, 1986) studying this topic (Parsons and Parsons 1990). I spent the summer of 1987 as a visiting professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). By

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that time I was quite aware of the accelerating destruction of archaeological resources that had been on-going for decades throughout the Valley of Mexico. Indeed, one purpose of my visit at UNAM was to revisit some of the archaeological sites we had located in earlier surveys, and to appraise the extent of damage they had suffered (Parsons 1989a, 1997; Sanders 1997). This was a pretty depressing experience. By this time I was also more aware of the importance of ethnographic "salvage," and of how to go about it. During our 1987 fieldtrips I also had an opportunity to witness first hand the transformation of rurallifeways that was well underway almost everywhere--e.g., many well remembered rural agricultural villages of the 1960s were now primarily suburban bedroom communities, inhabited by wage earners who commuted daily to their jobs in Mexico City. One of our 1987 fieldtrips brought us to Nexquipayac, my first visit in 20 years. I was pleasantly surprised to find a handful of saltmakers still at work there. However, all the signs indicated that these men were destined to be the very last saltmakers of Nexquipayac, the very last practitioners of a rapidly dying tradition. I was convinced, as was Apenes (1944) before me, that this saltmaking had direct links to the prehispanic past. I realized that ifI didn't record the details of the saltmakers' work, it was highly unlikely that anybody else would ever do it, and that archaeologists would lose some good insights into the meaning of the ancient material remains available to them around the lakeshore. I decided to return the next year to study saltmaking at Nexquipayac. This monograph is the result of that 6-week study carried out during July and early August 1988. I undertook this ethnographic study above all because I believed that traditional saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico deserved to be recorded in detail while it still functioned, however marginally, in the contemporary economy. I was also convinced that this ethnographic study could inform archaeological research on ancient saltmaking, both in the Valley of Mexico and perhaps elsewhere. There are many traditional activities hovering on the edge of extinction that deserve such recording in Mexico and throughout the world. Few scholars appear to be much interested in studying the material and organizational aspects of these vanishing lifeways, and archaeologists may be virtually alone in making such efforts as do exist. In one sense this monograph is a plea to others to undertake comparable studies elsewhere while there is still a little time left to do so.

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Acknowledgments I am greatly indebted to the National Geographic Society for its generous support of my 1988 fieldwork in Nexquipayac (Grant No. 3895-88). The University ofMichigan Museum of Anthropology also provided substantial support for all stages of the study. Very special thanks are due to my two informants at Nexquipayac: Sr. Sebastian Nopaltictla and Sr. Ignacio Casareal. They were extraordinarily generous with their time and knowledge about saltmaking, and I will always be grateful for how much I was able to learn from them. I thank three colleagues from the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropol6gicas, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico for their great interest and cooperation in the field study at Nexquipayac: Luis Barba, Noel Morelos, and Mari Carmen Serra. Thanks also go to my daughter, Apphia, for the generous loan of her flash camera for some important indoor photography in 1988. As always, my wife Mary was a pillar of support throughout the study. I am especially grateful to Irmgard W. Johnson for access to her unpublished notes about traditional tequesquite use in Mexico, and to the marvelous photographs in her care taken by Bodil Christensen during the 1930s and 1940s. The personnel of the Swedish National Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm were most helpful in facilitating my access to photographs taken by Ola Apenes and assembled by Sigvald Linne during the 1940s: Per Kilks (Director), Staffan Brunius (Curator of the Americas), Irene Svensson (Curator of Documentation), and Sanna Torneman (Keeper of Photographic Collections). William T. Sanders made it possible for me to first encounter Nexquipayac and its environs during archaeological fieldwork he directed in the early 1960s. Over the years I have benefitted greatly from discussions about saltmaking and related topics with Anthony Andrews, Jeffrey Bonevich, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Thomas Charlton, Cynthia Otis Charlton, Robert Cobean, Richard Ford, Gayle Fritz, Fred Hicks, the late Mary Hodge, Irmgard W. Johnson, Catherine Liot, William J. Mayer-Oakes, Guadalupe Mastache, Leah Minc, JoAn Moran, Deborah Nichols, Elisabeth O. Parsons, Mary Parsons, Daniel Potts, William Sanders, Mari Carmen Serra, Michael Smith, Paul Tolstoy, Mathrew Wallrath, Phil Weigand, and Eduardo Williams. Richard Ford and Heather Trigg provided me with several important bibliographic references.

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-1-

Introduction

This monograph has three interrelated objectives. First, to describe traditional saltmaking at Nexquipayac, a village on the northeastern shore of former Lake Texcoco in the eastern Valley of Mexico (Figs. 1.1, 1.2). Second, to develop the archaeological implications of the ethnographic observations. Third, to suggest how anthropological archaeologists might better conceptualize and carry out their investigations of prehistoric salt production, distribution, and use as part of their efforts to study ancient societies. Archaeologists are generally very sensitive to the widespread and accelerating destruction of the archaeological record caused by urbanization, suburbanization, and the intensification of land use. They may be less sensitive, however, to the concomitant disappearance of traditional, long-established lifeways firmly rooted in the prehistoric past. This monograph seeks to help correct this insensitivity.

General Background Scholarly interest in salt production, exchange, and use has been around for a long time. Nearly 2000 years ago, for example, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder (1963:423-35) made a very comprehensive statement about the production, exchange, and use of salt in the ancient Classical world. Tacitus (1937:99-101), another Roman historian, gave a vivid account of the overt violence that could result from competition over salt sources in the Roman provinces. Numerous writers since the days of

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3

Pliny and Tacitus have emphasized the sociocultural importance of salt in premodern societies around the world (e.g., Adhead 1992; Bloch 1963; DeBrisay and Evans [eds.] 1975; Denton 1984; Moriarity 1968; Multhauf 1978; Nenquin 1961; Trumbull 1899). Modern Westerners are accustomed to cheap and easily available salt, so omnipresent that much of its consumption goes virtually unnoticed; it is one of the most plentiful and most utilitarian materials in our lives. It is difficult for us to appreciate how scarce, highly valued, and eagerly sought-after salt has been in so many premodern societies, ranging from isolated tribal groups in highland New Guinea (e.g., Freund et al. 1965; Godelier 1974; Meggit 1958) to highly centralized Asian states (e.g., Sung Ying-Hsing 1966; Tao-Chang Chiang 1976; Willeman 1889; Zwehtkoff 1888). The basis for salt's desirability has been debated. Some have emphasized its physiological importance. The human body cannot function as a biological organism without a certain minimum concentration of salt; this is a particular issue for agricultural peoples who do not consume much meat, and so do not acquire much "natural" salt in their diets. Others have pointed to its sociocultural significance. Salt is known to . have provided the basis for building and maintaining prestige, for facilitating impersonal exchanges in market economies, and for making ritual offerings to supernatural forces. Both of these dimensions are important. In premodern socieities, salt has had many social, political, economic, and ideological roles that do not exist in the modern Western world. For this reason, the study of salt can offer important insights into the anthropology of the past. Because salt itself is rarely preserved in ancient sites, archaeologists must study it indirectly, through the material remains associated with its production, distribution, and use. The identification or recognition of these remains is often difficult and uncertain.

The Physiological Basis for Salt Consumption A certain level of salt concentration in the human body is essential in order for it to function properly as a biological organism. It is widely recognized that people who consume significant quantities of meat require much less salt to be added to their diet than those who subsist mainly on plant foods; hunters acquire the salt they need through the flesh of the animals they consume. Because bodily salt is lost through sweating, people who live in cold climates, and whose activities do not cause them to sweat very much, require less added salt than those who live in warm climates and who sweat a lot. Active people in cold climates, and sedentary people in warm climates, will obviously require varied intermediate levels of salt for physiological functions. Most specialists recognize that a certain minimum amount of salt-acquired either "naturally" in food itself, or "artificially" by addition of salt to food-must be consumed regularly in order to replace salts lost naturally by the human body through daily waste excretion (e.g., Denton 1984). This minimum daily per capita salt intake

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

4

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. Otumba

Introduction

5

(from both natural and artificial sources) is variously estimated at 0.7 g (Keslin 1964:10-11), at up to 15 g (studies cited in Brown 1980:3), at 0.5-4 g (studies cited in Andrews 1983:9), at 5-20 g (e.g., Multhauf 1978:4-5), and at 8-10 g for Mayan Indians living in a humid, tropical environment (Andrews 1983:9). Some estimates are phrased in terms of minimal requirements beyond the "normal" dietary salt-for instance, Bloch (1963:88), who estimates 2-5 g/personJday, and Dauphinee (1960:413) 4-5 g/person/day. Several writers (e.g., Marcus 1984; Baunitz 1956) cite studies of South American tropical forest groups (horticulturalists, who also do significant hunting) who add virtually no salt to their traditional diets (e.g., Holmberg 1950). Carrying this view to the extreme, Carter (1975:13) concludes that "man, except perhaps in the most exceptional circumstances, has no physiological need to add extra salt to his diet." Refinements of these varied estimates produce higher or lower figures that vary according to climate, and to individual age, health, and activity. Most historically documented people consume far more "artificial" salt than they require for strictly physiological functions. A worldwide daily average per capita salt intake on the order of 12 g characterized the nineteenth century (e.g., Multhauf 1978:4-5), and modern intakes of 24 g/day, or even higher, are common in some regions (e.g., Carter 1975:13). Why do so many people consume so much more salt than they actually need? One aspect of this question is that much salt is consumed outside the human body-in preserving meat, tanning hides, making soap, dyeing cloth, refining metal ores, and in a variety of other economic and ritual activities. Sometimes these nondietary uses of salt are lumped together with dietary salt in calculating average per capita salt "consumption." Another issue relates to acquired taste for salt: once people become accustomed to it, unsalted food may simply seem insipid and unappealing (Kaunitz 1956: 1141). My main concern is with agricultural populations in a semi-arid highland environment with little meat in their diet. For that context, I will assume that to maintain bodily functions a minimum average of 2 g of salt per person per day must be added to the diet. This is a fairly conservative figure, one that could obviously be adjusted upward or downward according to different assumptions about salt "need." On this basis, the 1.2 million inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico in the early sixteenth century (Sanders et al. 1979: 186) would have required a minimum of some 2400 kg of salt per day (876 metric tons per year) in order to maintain bodily functions. To this, of course, must be added whatever salt may have been consumed by the 1.2 million people in nondietary ways-for example, for dyeing cloth, for export outside the region, or in rituals. I will return to this issue in Chapter 8.

Salt and Saltmaking in Mesoamerica and the Valley of Mexico The traditional roles of salt in Mesoamerica are no different from those in other parts of the world. Ample archaeological, historical, and ethnographic documenta-

6

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

tion attests to the widespread importance of salt production and exchange during prehispanic, colonial, and modern times (e.g., Andrews 1983; Ewald 1985). Ethnohistoric studies have revealed something of salt's ideological importance in late prehispanic times (e.g., Carrasco 1963). The Valley of Mexico, with its large saline lakes at the bottom of an internal drainage basin, was a primary focus of salt production at the time of initial European contact in the sixteenth century (Gibson 1964; MendizabaI1946). Lake Texcoco, the lowest and most saline of the lakes, has always been the core saltmaking zone; there is no indication that saltmaking ever occurred around the southern freshwater lakes (Lakes Chalco-Xochimilco, Fig. 1.2). Archaeological surveys have located a series of probable Postclassic saltmaking sites (Fig. 1.3) around the edges of former Lake Texcoco (Blanton 1972; Parsons 1971; Sanders 1976; Sanders et al. 1979; Tolstoy 1958). Excavations at one of these sites have provided suggesti ve details of ancient saltmaking technology (e.g., Banos 1980; Banos and Sanchez 1998; Sanchez 1984, 1989; Talavera 1979). Despite the general knowledge about the importance of prehispanic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico, there is little specific information about the material correlates of this activity. Thus, archaeologists have always found it difficult to be very confident of their inferences about prehispanic salt production and exchange, particularly for earlier periods for which the ethnohistoric sources are less helpful (that is, prior to ca. A.D. 1400). In 1940, Ola Apenes (1944) observed saltmaking at San Cristobal Nexquipayac, a village of about 900 inhabitants on the northeastern shoreline of former Lake Texcoco. Nexquipayac was then the only community in the Valley of Mexico where traditional salt production still existed, although Apenes learned that until the 1930s there had also been some remnants of this activity at the nearby villages of Santa Isabel Ixtapan, Tequisistlan, San Salvador Atenco, La Magdalena Panoaya, Santa Clara Coatlan, and San Juan de Aragon (this latter village at the northeastern edge of Mexico City). Apenes described a process of filtering water through salty earth placed inside a conical pit. The water trickled slowly into a ceramic jar through a narrow cane tube leading out from the base of the pit. The brine was then poured into a metal pan and boiled until only the crystalline salt remained. This twentieth-century saltmaking was clearly a direct descendant of the practices sketched by sixteenth-century chroniclers (e.g., Sahagun 1961). Apenes (1944:37) also mentioned the collection of salt that formed naturally through solar evaporation on the surfaces of shallow saline pools around the lakeshore (Plates 1.1, 1.2). In 1940 this simple salt harvesting was apparently becoming quite rare. Neither of my two 1988 informants had any memory of it, although one would have been about twelve years old at the time of Apenes' visit. During archaeological surveys in 1967, JoAn Moran and I made some brief ethnographic observations at Nexquipayac (Moran 1967; Parsons 1971). We found that some saltmaking continued there, apparently identical to that described a quarter

Plate 1. 1 Northeastern Lake Texcoco, 1954 airphoto. Courtesy Cia. Mexicana de Aerofoto.

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8

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 1.2. Facing southeast across southern Lake Texcoco in the late 1930s. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

century earlier by Apenes. We were especially interested to note that the saltmakers discarded their leached earth in the immediate vicinity of their workshops. Over the years this had produced the huge earth mounds that underlay the entire saltmaking area at Las Salinas (a detached barrio of Nexquipayac, located a few hundred meters southwest of the main village) (Plate 1.3). We concluded that a comparable process had formed the sherd-covered earth mounds that we were identifying as late prehispanic saltmaking sites in our surveys around the edges of Lake Texcoco. In 1967 there were approximately a dozen saltmaking workshops at Nexquipayac. When I revisited the village in 1987, I found that only three workshops were still functioning, operated by three middle-aged men, sons of two of the elderly saltmakers we had met twenty years before. In 1987 I spent parts of two days talking to these men and observing their work. I returned for a six-week visit in July and August 1988.

The Scope of This Monograph Our current understanding of prehispanic salt production in the Valley of Mexico (perhaps expressed most completely in Sanders, Parsons, and Santley 1979) is based upon limit~d historical and archaeological data. The available documentary and ar-

Introduction

9

chaeological sources indicate that salt production was important around the edges of Lake Texcoco at the time of initial European contact in 1519. These sources, together with Apenes' (1944) pioneering ethnography, have suggested that the amorphous lakeshore mounds heavily littered with sherds of fabric-marked pottery (Texcoco Fabric Marked) functioned as Late Postclassic salt production loci. The consistent presence of very small quantities of this same fabric-marked pottery at Late Postclassic sites throughout the Valley of Mexico has suggested that the salt produced on the lakeshore was packaged and widely distributed in crude containers made of this same ceramic ware (e.g., Banos and Sanchez 1998; Minc 1999). Although these interpretations are reasonable enough, archaeologists have been unable to go beyond generalities, especially regarding earlier periods for which the ethnohistoric sources are much less helpful, and for which there does not seem to be a distinctive, specialized type of pottery (analogous to Texcoco Fabric Marked) associated with saltmaking. Archaeologists still cannot say very much about how Texcoco Fabric Marked pottery was actually used, or about how salt was actually made, or about how much labor and energy saltmaking consumed, or about what levels of salt output may have been feasible, or about how saltmaking may have been organized, or about what changes may have occurred in all these parameters over time. It was with these kinds of questions in mind that I approached the 1988 study. I was under no illusion that what I might learn at Nexquipayac in 1988, or what Apenes had observed there in 1940, could be projected directly back to the prehispanic era. Many technological, environmental, and organizational changes have greatly obscured the linkages across more than 450 years. In that interval entire political and economic structures have been several times transformed. There have been profound changes in market organization, land tenure and land use, and even the salinity of the lakeshore soil has been significantly affected by large-scale drainage (e.g., Gibson 1964:306). Transportation systems have been radically transformed as lakes were drained, canoes became obsolete, and pack animals and motorized vehicles were introduced. Over-grazing and deforestation have had profound consequences for the availability of organic fuels. The introduction of new processes (e.g., silver refining) and new products (e.g., gunpowder) has created some new needs for salts that are wholly without prehispanic analogs. I knew that if my study of traditional saltmaking at Nexquipayac was going to have any application at all to archaeological research, I would have to consider my data squarely within the context of these changes. Although some of these changes are profound, some aspects of traditional saltmaking at Nexquipayac seem remarkably like the descriptions of sixteenth-century saltmaking. The amorphous archaeological lakeshore mounds seem comparable to the soil refuse produced by modern saltmakers. Historical studies (e.g., Ewald 1985; Gibson 1964) have helped bridge the gap between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore, the modern saltmakers at Nexquipayac operate in the same region in which their cultural and

10

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico Date 1520 A.D.

Period

Phase

Late Postclassic

Aztec III

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1350 A.D. 1150A.D. 900 A.D. Epiclassic Metepec Xolalpan

650 A.D.

Classic

Tlamimilolpa Miccaotli

150 A.D. Tzacualli 50 B.C. 250 B.C.

Terminal Formative Late Formati ve

Patlachique Ticoman

500 B.C. Middle Formative 900 B.C. Early Formative 1200 B.C.

La Pastora EI Arbolillo Bomba Ixtapaluca

Figure 1.3. Prehispanic chronology in the Valley of Mexico.

biological ancestors lived and worked. With proper care, a study of modem saltmaking at Nexquipayac should be useful to archaeologists, especially when considered within a broadly comparative perspective.

The Local Setting Nexquipayac is situated atop an almost imperceptible knoll of slightly higher ground on the broad lakeshore plain that lies at an elevation between 2240-2250 m asl at the northeastern comer offormer Lake Texcoco, in the eastern Valley of Mexico (Figs. 1.1, 1.2). The village is in the delta of two major streams: the Rio San Juan Teotihuacan on the west, and the Rio Papalotla to the east. In 1988 about 2000 people lived in Nexquipayac, compared to 1310 in 1960 (Mexico 1963), 959 in 1950 (Mexico 1953), and 907 in 1940 (Mexico 1943). Although increasing numbers of people commuted daily from Nexquipayac to jobs in Mexico City, in 1988 the dominant activity (especially for middle aged and older people) was still subsistence-related agriculture in the ejido fields that sur-

Int roduction

11

Plate 1.3. Nexquipayac and Las Salinas, 1954 airphoto. Courtesy Cia. Mexicana de Aerofoto.

round the community. Nexquipayac sits in the middle of a wide, inten ively cultivated lakeshore plain. Most households continued to be involved in a mixed trategy of plant cultivation (emphasizing maize, barley, and alfalfa) and animal herding (mainly sheep and cattle). Mechanized agriculture was still very limited. Burro cart were still the most common form of local (off-highway) transport, and hor e-drawn plows were the dominant mode of field cultivation. In 1988, and for approximately the past century, saltmaking activity had been concentrated in a detached barrio, locally known a La Salinas, situated about 250 m southwest of the southern edge of central Nexquipayac (Plate 1.3). The 1988 population of Las Salinas was about 50 people. As indicated in Plate 1.3, originally there were two distinct loci of saltmaking, each identified by a large artificial mound of refuse soil that had accumulated over the years at the saltmaker ' workshop. These two mounded areas are separated by a distance of about 150 m; much of the northern mounded area is now occupied by a cemetery, and only the southern mound was in

12

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

1988 still inhabited by saltmakers. The northern mound occupies an area of about 1.5 hectares, while the southern mound covers about 2.5 hectares. I estimate that the average height of the artificial mounding in both areas is about 4.5 m. The total volume of both mounds at Las Salinas amounts to roughly 180,000 cubic meters of earth. In 1988 there were three active saltmakers at Las Salinas (all working on a parttime basis). In 1967 there were six to eight saltmakers there, some of whom may have been working full-time. We were told that as recently as about 1950 there were approximately 40 saltmakers, and there were probably a few more than that at the time of Apenes' visit in 1940. According to local oral tradition, the ancestors (grandparents and great-grandparents) of the modern saltmakers became established at Las Salinas only about a century ago, after they were evicted by the local hacienda owner from their original homes and workshops on Cerro Tepetzingo (3.4 km southwest of Las Salinas). There are abundant archaeological traces of nineteenth-century saltmaking on and around Cerro Tepetzingo, and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the local oral traditions. I saw no prehispanic pottery at Las Salinas, and all the mounding there is probably the product of saltmaking over the past century. If so, then the 180,000 cubic meters of deposit have accumulated in 100 years. This amounts to an average annual accumulation of roughly 1800 cubic meters. This figure is an interesting index of the former scale and intensity of salt production, particularly as the three currently active saltmakers are only producing a combined total of about 150 cubic meters of soil refuse annually. Traditional saltmaking in Nexquipayac is on the verge of extinction for one very powerful reason: it cannot compete economically with commercial salt. In 1988 the latter product was being sold in local stores for less than 300 pesos per kilo. Comparable salt produced by the Nexquipayac saltmakers cost 1500 pesos per kilo, and even at that rate each of the saltmakers grossed only 60,000-80,000 pesos (U.S. $26.50-35.25, at the 1988 rate of exchange) for the sale of their entire weekly production.

The Organization of This Monograph The core of this monograph is Chapter 2, a description of saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988. This is a straightforward piece of descriptive ethnography, concluding with a preliminary consideration of its archaeological implications. Unless otherwise noted, all references to past and present time in Chapter 2 are relative to 1988. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I expand the spatial and chronological context by synthesizing the historic-period information on saltmaking from the rest of Mesoamerica and from other parts of the world. I see this comparative perspective as essential in developing better analogies for prehispanic saltmaking in the Valley of

Introduction

13

Mexico. Chapter 6 emphasizes the relationships between saltmaking and cloth dyeing that seem potentially relevant to the Valley of Mexico. This helps emphasize an important point: that not all "saltmaking" sites were necessarily producing salt for dietary purposes. In Chapter 7 I synthesize the relevant results of archaeological studies of ancient saltmaking throughout the world, working from the Valley of Mexico to other parts of Mesoamerica and other regions. Finally, in Chapter 8, I attempt to integrate all the information at my disposal to develop hypotheses about the long-term role of salt in the prehispanic economy of the Valley of Mexico. These hypotheses may serve to guide future research.

14

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

-2-

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

The three active saItmakers in Nexquipayac all operate in a very similar manner: all are of comparable socioeconomic status; all operate small workshops in which one or two people comprise the primary workforce; all operate open-air workshops, in which only the boiling operation is housed under a roof (usually in a small adobe structure); all work year-round at saItmaking on a part-time basis, combining their saltmaking with other activities; all use comparable techniques and tools for collecting and processing soil; all use industrial scrap rubber for fuel; all are active middleaged men, between 43 and 60 years of age, who have been involved in saltmaking since childhood, and who are descended through at least four generations of specialized saltmakers at this locality; and, although all have children or other younger relatives who know something about saltmaking, all are the last in their families or in their community who will have any significant involvement in traditional saltmaking.

Synoposis of the Saltmaking Process Saltmaking at Nexquipayac involves six basic sequential steps: 1) collecting the soils whose salts are to be leached 2) mixing the soils to produce one of four desired products: sal blanca (white salt), sal negra (black salt), sal amarilla (yellow salt, also called sal tinta), or (rarely) salitre (saltpeter)

15

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

16

Cerro Huatepec

() La Magdalena • Madero

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Cecilia

@

N

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500 I meters

1000 I

Figure 2.1. Plan of the immediate Nexquipayac area.

•

Modern settlement Modern soil source

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

17

3) filtering water through the soil mixture in order to leach out the salts and concentrate them in a saline liquid solution (agua salada) 4) boiling the agua salada to obtain crystalline salt 5) drying the crystalline salt 6) selling the dried salt

Long-term salt production entails three main kinds of overhead costs: maintaining the workshop facilities; securing access to the appropriate soils; and acquiring fuel for boiling operations. Today only two types of salt are regularly made at Nexquipayac: sal blanca and sal negra. Occasionally an intermediate type of salt, sal amarilla, is made. As far as I could determine, this latter product, which is usually a batch of sal blanca that has not turned out quite right, is used only for local meat curing. At present roughly 90% of the overall production is sal blanca for use as ordinary table salt. Sal negra is made in much smaller quantities, exclusively for sale to producers of carnitas (deepfried pork), a popular fiesta and picnic food to which the sal negra imparts a desirable golden brown color when mixed with the frying oil. Until the 1940s, substantial quantities of salitre were also made for sale to fireworks producers. Each of these four crystalline end-products requires different kinds of raw materials (soils) and preparation techniques. Two basic kinds of soil are used in saltmaking: natural deposits that occur at and around the edges of the former lakebed a few kilometers to the west and south of Nexquipayac (Fig. 2.1); and previously leached soil that has accumulated at saltmaking workshops in and around the village (ranging in age from prehispanic to recent). These latter soils serve to "dilute" the strength of the lakeshore soils and thereby facilitate the crystallization process. I was told that if the unmodified lakeshore soils were used alone, the boiling process would produce only foam, and no salt crystals would form. There are several different categories of lakeshore soils, each of which is identified on the basis of its color and taste. Each soil type is appropriate for making one of the two principal end products (sal blanca or sal negra). Similarly, for each desired end product there is an appropriate type of leached workshop soil that must be mixed with the requisite lakeshore soil. The different categories of lakeshore and workshop soils are located and distinguished on the basis of a truly formidable knowledge accumulated through years of experience. This knowledge and its effective practical deployment are absolutely essential to the success of saltmaking because even minor errors in judgment or procedure can seriously affect both the quality and the quantity of salt production. Once a lakeshore soil source area is located, a shallow layer of soil, seldom more than five centimeters thick, is skimmed off the ground surface with a flat-bladed shovel. This soil is either piled up to await future transport back to the workshop, or

18

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

loaded onto a burro cart or flatbed truck for immediate transport to the workshop. Soil collection and transport is preferably done during the dry season (NovemberMay), but it can be performed at any time of the year, particularly if burro carts are used. If a flatbed truck is used, one or two large loads, sufficient for many months or even the whole year, are typically brought into the workshop over one or two days during the dry season. When carts are used, hauling must be done piecemeal. Flatbed trucks have been used only since the 1960s; prior to the 1950s no carts were used, and soil transport was done exclusively with burros carrying large bags of earth on their backs. Most of the leached workshop soils needed for the soil mixtures are acquired from the immediate vicinity of the workshop itself, and so the transport and storage of these materials is logistically much simpler than for the lakeshore soils. However, in some cases these leached soils also must be acquired from more distant localities, and so their transport and storage can be formidable. Once the soils have been transported to the workshop, each soil type is physically segregated and covered with a plastic sheet to protect it from rainfall (in some cases the earth is bagged in large plastic sacks). Appropriate quantities and proportions of the different soils are then mixed together, as required, on a hard-packed earth surface in the central part of the workshop area. The mixing operation is performed with a flat-bladed shovel, and involves carefully turning over and intermixing all the component soils. Thorough mixing is critically important for consistent and dependable salt production. The soil mixture is then loaded into one or more circular conical pits (pitas), measuring about 40-50 cm deep and 90-100 cm in diameter at the ground surface, that have been dug into the banks of previously leached earth that surround the mixing surfaces at all workshops. The earth mixture is carefully packed down inside the pila, and after that a substantial quantity of clean water is poured into it. Packing the soil inside the pila is another important procedure which must be correctly performed for successful salt production: if the soil mixture is too tightly packed, then filtration will be too slow and the resulting agua salada will be too saline or too dark in color; if the packing is too loose, then the filtration will be too rapid, and the agua salada less saline than desired. The water slowly filters down through the soil in the pila, leaching out the salts, and finally drains through a long drip-tube that exits from the bottom of the pila and empties into a container (plastic, metal, or ceramic). This filtration takes about 20 hours to complete, and each pila load generally produces about 30-35 liters of brine (agua salada). The agua salada is then poured into a large shallow metal pan (paila) that rests atop a brick oven (which is linked to an external chimney) inside a small adobewalled boiling hut. A fire of scrap rubber is kindled inside the oven, and continues to be supplied with fuel over the course of the next 1.5-2.0 hours while the agua salada is boiled to produce crystalline salt. When the crystallization is judged to be complete, the dripping-wet solid salt is then scooped out of the boiling pan and placed on

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

19

a piece of coarse cloth atop a prepared drying bed (camada) in one corner of the boiling hut, or just outside the hut's entrance. The salt dries there overnight, and the next day is removed and put into a large basket that is kept in the saltmaker's residence. At week's end the accumulated salt from the previous week's production is sold, most of it within the local community or through the weekly market at the nearby town of Chiconcuac. The primary maintenance connected with salt production involves the conical leaching pit (the pila), the metal boiling pan (the paila), and (at longer intervals) the boiling hut. Each pila lasts for about five years. It must be dug, lined with salt-free clay, and the hole for its drip-tube punched through the earth bank with a long iron rod. After each 20-hour leaching sequence the leached earth must be removed from the pila (taking care not to damage the clay liner). The leached earth is tossed to one side, at the edge of the workshop. At this point the clay liner must be smoothed and resurfaced (using a soft scraper made of an old hard-rubber shoe sole), and then covered with a thin layer of ash (from the fuel burned in the boiling hut oven) which prevents the clay from sticking to the compacted soil mixture that will soon be loaded anew into the pila. The boiling pan is made (usually by the saltmaker himself) from ordinary sheet metal, about 2 mm thick. These pans usually last for about three years before they rust through. Some care must be taken to wash the pan thoroughly after each use so that accumulated salts do not corrode the sheet metal too quickly. The boiling hut is essential to protect the worker(s) during bad weather, and to prevent wind-blown dust and other impurities from mixing with the boiling agua salada or the drying salt. These huts are always made from adobe bricks, with a flat roof formed of wooden posts, leafy thatch, and scraps of metal. The main structure of a well-built hut will last for many years, but the flat roof and chimney (made either of adobe brick or metal tubing) must be repaired or replaced every few years. Although the burro-drawn carts commonly used for hauling soil from the lakeshore are also used in other activities (e.g., transporting people, tools, and materials back and forth between residences and agricultural fields), they are often vital to saltmaking activities and so part of their maintenance and replacement costs must also be charged against the salt output. Prior to about 1970, almost all saltmaking was carried out using local plant and animal fuels for boiling. The main fuels employed were dried maize roots from harvested agricultural fields, bushy and weedy vegetation from nearby stream banks, the sharp-edged grass (sacahuistle) that grows thickly on the nearby lakeshore plain, dried animal manure, fallen leaves from a few relatively large stands of trees, and an occasional (but rare) batch of firewood. The only exception to this pattern seems to have been a brief period of experimentation with gas-fired boilers in the 1950s and 1960s, which proved to be prohibitively costly. The collection, storage, and utilization of these natural fuels absorbed a tremendous amount of time and energy throughout the entire annual cycle. Since 1970

20

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

saltmakers have relied for their fuel needs almost exclusively on industrial rubber scrap. Most of this scrap is purchased in large lots, a few times each year, from professional dealers who haul in large quantities on flatbed trucks from shoe factories at the edge of Mexico City, some 20-30 km to the west. Quantities of old rubber tires are also acquired by the saltmakers who periodically collect them from local tire repair shops and haul them into their workshops on burro carts. Thus, since the 1960s saltmakers have wholly abandoned the labor-intensive procurement of nonfossil fuel. Since the 1950s, with the rapid decline in the numbers of saltmakers at Nexquipayac and adjacent villages, there has been virtually no need to locate new lakeshore soil sources or to regulate the use of existing soil sources. The three surviving saltmakers are free to take whatever soil they need from sources located on the communal, or ejido, lands of several different local communities. However, up until about 1950 these use rights had to be secured and periodically renewed by means of a small annual payment from each saltmaker to the appropriate community authorities. The availability of clean, fresh water is an essential aspect of the saltmaking process. Water is used (1) to clean the numerous utensils and tools which have come into contact with saline solutions (if they are not well cleaned the salt will become stained and assume an undesirable grayish color, and some measure of product consistency will be lost); (2) to pour into the loaded pilas to initiate the leaching process; (3) to sprinkle liberally onto the surface of the drying salt in order to further whiten it; (4) to clean the saltmaker's own hands as he shifts from one task where his hands get quite dirty (e.g., mixing soils) to another which demands clean hands (e.g., boiling and drying the salt); (5) to add in small quantities to the soils as they are being mixed in order to change their consistency slightly and thereby facilitate the mixing operation; and (6) to sprinkle in small quantities over the surfaces of the pilas' clay linings as they are being smoothed and repaired after each leaching sequence. Prior to about twenty years ago the saltmakers' needs for water were met by shallow wells located near the workshops. About twenty years ago these wells dried up, apparently because of a general lowering of the water table brought about by intensified irrigation and the industrial and domestic requirements of urban consumers. For a few years after that, in the early 1970s, the saltmakers laboriously carried water to their workshops by hand and on burros from the Rio San Juan Teotihuacan some 100 m away. In the mid-1970s municipal piped water became available, and since then each saltmaker has had access to a water tap. The critical importance of clean water is underscored whenever there is a breakdown in the piped water system. Such breakdowns occurred two or three times during the course of my study, and each such event produced a significant operating crisis.

21

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

meters

I

o

I

I

5

10

~N-

. road .. A

~

} Pilas

o

Salt-making Workshop Nexquipayac, Mexico contour interval = approx. 1.0 m

E F G H I

J K L M N

Pile of mixed earth Pile of tequesquite soil Pile of stove ash Boiling hut Pile of rubber scrap fuel Pile of stored lakeshore soil Pile of stored lakeshore soil Holding barrel Water tap Soil-mixing surface

Figure 2.2. SN Workshop, plan.

22

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.1 . Facing northwest toward general area of Las Salinas. Salt workshops are on elevated ground in center of photo.

Plate 2.2. SN Workshop. scrap-rubber fuel pile.

Sailmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.3. SN Workshop. stored lakebed soil.

Plate 2.4. Facing northwe t at residential compound north we t of SN workshop.

23

24

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.5. Facing north we t at east side of Cerro Tepotzingo.

THE WORKSHOPS: FACILITIES AND IMPLEMENTS

The SN Workshop (Fig. 2.2) The SN Workshop is situated at the northeastern corner of Las Salinas. The main part of the workshop occupies an area of about 15 x 15 m atop a large mound that has built up to a height of 3-6 m above the surrounding plain over the course of approximately a century of saltmaking (Plate 2.1). There is a large pile of rubber scrap fuel about 10 m west of the main workshop (Plate 2.2), and some 6-8 m to the north is a large pile of lakeshore soil stored under a plastic sheet (Plate 2.3). Both the stored fuel and lakeshore soil are situated well below the level of the main workshop, near the base of the artificial supporting mound, in order to facilitate their delivery by truck and cart. About 50-75 m to the west of the workshop, also built atop the mounded area and around its edges, is a tight cluster of five or six adobe and concrete-block structures (Plate 2.4). These are the residential household of Sr. SN and his three married sons and their families. The SN salt workshop is thu physically detached from any domestic residential activity, and is devoted exclusively to salt production. Sr. SN is 60 years of age. As a youth in the 1930s and 1940s he worked as a fulltime saltmaker at this locality with his father (born ca. 1901). At about age 20 (ca.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

25

1949) Sr. SN obtained a full-time job in a factory near Mexico City, and for some 35 years he continued with factory work and had only limited involvement in saltmaking. However, he continued to live at his old home in Las Salinas. His father continued full-time saltmaking, and as SN's own children grew older they assisted their grandfather to make salt until the latter's death in 1970. After that point SN's older sons, then in their later teens, took over the saltmaking on their own, and they continued to operate on a part-time basis until ca. 1984. At that point Sr. SN retired from his factory job with a modest pension and took up part-time saltmaking again as his children sought better-paid employment elsewhere. SN's paternal grandfather (born ca. 1865) and great-grandfather were also saltmakers. His grandfather relocated to the present location about a century ago, after being forcibly evicted (along with many other saltmakers and their families) from his home and workshop at Cerro Tepetzinco (3.3 km southwest of the present workshop) (Fig. 2.1; Plate 2.5). Sr. SN operates his one-man workshop on a part-time basis. His typical routine for six days each week (excluding only Sunday) is to spend the first two daylight hours (about 5:30-7:30 a.m.) and the later afternoon hours (2-6 p.m.) at the salt workshop. During the middle part of the day he takes his flock of sheep and few head of cattle out to pasture on the grassy communal lands 6-8 km to the southwest of Nexquipayac, and returns with them to their corral back of his home. Sr. SN normally works a six-day week, with a fairly regular cycle of salt-making activities. On a typical early Monday morning he begins by shoveling the leached soil out of all three pilas. He then scrapes and smooths the clay linings of the pila pits, cleans out the top of the drip-tube and its ixtle plug and the ixtapepextle (filtering cloth on the bottom of the pila pit), loads freshly mixed soil (prepared the preceding Saturday) into the pi las, pours water into the loaded pi las, and makes sure the receptacle buckets are clean, in place, and properly covered. By this time it is 7:00 or 7:30 a.m., and Sr. SN takes his animals out to graze for several hours. At mid-morning a member of his household (usually a son, daughter-in-law, or older grandchild) comes over to the workshop from the nearby residential compound and pours an additional bucket or two of water into the loaded pilas. At about 1:30 p.m. Sr. SN returns to the workshop. His first action is to pour another bucket or two of water into each of the loaded pilas. Then he cleans out the boiling pan (paila), places it atop the stove inside the boiling hut, and pours about 30 liters of agua salada solution (left over from last week's production, and stored in the large barrel next to the boiling hut) into the paila. He then kindles the fire in the stove, and for the next two hours conducts the boiling operation. After about two hours, the fresh crystalline salt is removed from the paila and placed on one of the drying beds inside the boiling hut. The first boil is now complete. Sr. SN then pours another 30 liters of agua salada into the pail a, and carries out another boil. When the second boil is complete it is 5:00 or 5:30 p.m. If there is still a sizable backlog of last week's agua salada, a third boil may be carried out. However, usually the day's saltmaking ends with the completion of the second boil. At

26

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

that point Sr. SN pours about 10 liters of clean water into the boiling pan and leaves it in place on the cold stove, ready for the next day's work. Before leaving the workshop for the night, Sr. SN pours another bucket or two of water into each loaded pila. On a typical Tuesday morning there is little activity at the workshop. Sr. SN collects the accumulated agua salada from the receptacle bucket at each pila, making sure that these buckets are not overly full. The new agua salada is either poured into the large holding barrel next to the boiling hut, or remains standing next to the pila in one of the covered spare buckets. The two batches of dried salt from yesterday's two boils are collected from the drying bed, put into a bucket, and carried over to the main house for storage in a covered basket. Tuesday afternoon is devoted to boiling operations, essentially a duplication of Monday afternoon's activities. Wednesdays are essentially duplicates of Mondays: in the morning the pilas are cleaned out, the new soil mixture is loaded into the pilas, and the next leaching sequence begins anew; in the afternoon two or three batches of agua salada are boiled, and the fresh salt placed onto the drying beds. Thursdays are typically duplicates of Tuesdays, and on Fridays the activities performed on the preceding Monday and Wednesday are repeated. On Saturdays there are two main tasks. First, in the early morning a large batch of fresh soil mixture is prepared, sufficient for the needs of the entire coming week; and second, in the afternoon Sf. SN loads the week's accumulated production of sal blanca into a wheelbarrow and delivers it to established regular customers in Nexquipayac. There is rarely any saltmaking activity on Sundays. For the past 25-30 years, the main product of the SN Workshop has been sal blanca, with approximately 10% of the total output devoted to sal negra. Salitre (saltpeter) has not been made here since the 1940s. Prior to the 1960s, when larger quantities of sal negra and salitre were produced, a separate area some 10-15 m south of the present workshop was reserved for the production of these materials (Plate 2.6). Here was maintained a complete duplicate workshop facility, and great care was taken not to mix the tools, utensils, and soils involved in the production of sal blanca and sal negra/salitre. At present the small quantity of sal negra produced at this workshop is made using the same tools and utensils and space devoted to sal blanca production. However, great care is taken to minimize intermixing soils and liquids associated with the two products. In sum, Sr. SN is an active part-time saltmaker with three main sources of cash and subsistence income: the sale of salt; the sale and domestic consumption of animals and animal products; and his factory pension. He continues to make salt, in spite of its low economic return, because of his supplementary pension income, his ability to combine saltmaking with another productive activity (herding), his impressi ve knowledge and technical skills related to saltmaking, and his access to a long-established, long-functioning, and continuously maintained saltmaking workshop.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

27

The Permanent Features (Fig. 2.2) Three permanent workshop installations are immediately apparent: the mixing floor, the boiling hut, and the four pilas. The Mixing Floor (N on Fig. 2.2). This is simply a fairly level expanse (with a slight, but distinct, slope to the southwest) of hard-packed earth, measuring about 2.5 x 2.5 m in the central part of the main workshop. It is used for preparing the soil mixtures that are to be placed in the pilas. This surface is also used for the temporary placement of portable objects (e.g., buckets and shovels), but it is important that it be kept clean and well drained so that moisture and other impurities do not accumulate in or under the pile of mixed earth while it is resting on the surface. Sometimes this space is comparatively empty, but often it is partly occupied by one or more piles of soil. The Pilas (A, B, C, D on Fig. 2.2; Fig. 2.3). This workshop has three functioning pilas. Pila B (which was about five years old) was still functioning when I first arrived, but it was soon abandoned and replaced by a new pila (D). Pila A is about two years old, and Pila C has been in use for about three years. Most of the time these features are nearly full of earth-either in the process of being leached, or awaiting removal and replacement after the leaching process has been completed. The pila surfaces are open to the air only while they are first being dug and surfaced, or when they are being cleaned out and smoothed just before they are refilled. As can be seen in Figur~ 2.3, the pila consists of two main parts: the pit and the drip-tube. The pit typically measures 40-50 cm deep and 90-100 cm in diameter at the ground surface. The drip-tube is 2.0-2.5 cm in exterior diameter and about 150 cm long, usually projecting 30-50 cm from the earth face below the pila cavity. The drip-tubes traditionally are made of local carrizo cane, a bamboo-like reed. Increasingly, however, cane tubes are being replaced by plastic tubing of about the same size. The pila pit must be placed high enough so that the liquid dripping through the hole in its base can flow downward through the drip-tube into a suitable receptacle (traditionally ceramic jars, but now plastic buckets). Consequently, the pilas are always located on the tops or upper parts of the surrounding ridges of leached earth. Another key element of the pila is the clay liner that covers its entire interior surface. This liner, which functions primarily to keep the filtration liquid inside the pila, measures 1.0 cm thick, and it must be smoothed and repaired after each leaching sequence. The Boiling Hut (H on Fig. 2.2; Fig. 2.4). This is a flat-roofed adobe structure, with an interior area measuring 2.3 x 2.7 m, and standing 2.0 m high (interior height). The roof is constructed of wooden beams that support a thatch of mud-plastered cane leaves. The building's main functions are to house the stove and boiling operations, to provide a sheltered location for drying the salt, and to store some fuel and much of the portable gear (especially the evaporating pan) associated with saltmaking. There is no permanent door, but a large sheet of metal (the remains of an old boiling

28

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

pan) is pulled across the opening at the building's northwest corner when Sr. SN is away to prevent the entrance of stray domestic animals and small children. A crude adobe-brick chimney is attached to the exterior of the structure's southeast corner. The only permanent fixture installed inside the boiling hut is the brick-walled stove in the southeastern corner. This measures 1.05 x 1.10 m in area and stands 63 cm high, and is constructed of a single thickness of fired clay bricks that measure 1215 cm thick. The interior is a firebox in which the scrap rubber fuel is burned. There is a small opening, about 10 cm wide and 25 cm high, at floor level near the stove's northwest corner, through which fuel is fed into the firebox. When boiling is in process, the boiling pan rests directly atop the stove's walls where the surface has been carefully leveled so that there is a continuously tight contact between adobe wall and metal pan. This tight contact is essential to prevent the escape of smoke into the interior of the boiling hut. The Water Tap (Fig. 2.2). This is located about 10 m south-southwest of the boiling hut. It has been hooked onto the main municipal water line at Sr. SN's residence by means of a rubber hose. The water flow, although limited, is adequate for this workshop. The Portable Contents These are tools, utensils, and materials, which are used and moved around the workshop in the course of saltmaking. Some of these are more mobile than others. For example, the pile of ash debris or the large plastic barrel changes position much less frequently than does a shovel or a plastic bucket. However, all do shift position over time. Nevertheless, there is also a definite tendency for most portable items to cluster most of the time within two distinct sub-areas of the workshop: (1) around the edges of the pilas at the edge of the mixing floor; and (2) inside the boiling hut and around its exterior. In the descriptions below I have tried to convey an impression of the configuration of these objects and materials for a typical working day. Around the Edges of the Pi/as These are utensils associated with leaching process, with smoothing the surfaces of the clay-lined pila walls, and with receiving and holding the agua salada solution that drips out of the pilas. 1) Five hard-rubber scrapers made from shoe soles and (in one case) a piece of an old rubber tire (Fig. 2.5). These are used mainly to smooth the clay-lined surfaces of the pilas after the end of each leaching sequence, just before a new load of freshly mixed earth is inserted into the pila pit. Because this is a delicate task, in which some care must be taken not to damage the fragile clay lining, the softness, smoothness, and slight curvature of the hard rubber shoe sole are ideal characteristics for the tool. The scrapers are also used occasionally to scrape wet earth off shovels in the course

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

SN Workshop PilaA o 50 [

,

I

29

bucket

!

cm

,, ,,

,,

,

50

o [

!

!

I

bucket

!

cm

,,

,,

"

""

Pila 0 '"

// ,/

,

' earth bank

. -.:--. .:~-....-..- ..-:..-.::..-

-..---

......- .. ,'

=-----

SN Workshop Pila D 50 o [

I

[

cm

Figure 2.3. SN Workshop, pilas in cross-section.

bucket

30

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Figure 2.4. SN Workshop, boiling hut plan, fuel storage

camada

-

shelf I

r o !

50 !

!

!

100

__ z-

I

em

00 o

5

w....LL..w em

I

Figure 2,6, SN Workshop. ceramic jar formerly used as a brine receptacle. Figure 2,5. SN Workshop, hard-rubber scrapers, 3-5 mm thick,

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

plate 2.6. SN Workshop in 1967, showing two separate boiling huts for sal blanca and sal negra operations.

Plate 2.7. SN Workshop, pia tic containers .

31

32

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.8. SN

Wor~shop,

pila in operation. Scale is 50 cm long in units of 5 cm.

Plate 2.9. SN Workshop, brine receptacles. Scale = 50 cm.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

33

of removing leached earth from the pilas. The scrapers are generally dropped onto the ground right where they were last used, and picked up anew from that spot as they are needed again. Consequently, they are occasionally misplaced and lost, but this is of small concern since they are so easily replaced from the pile of scrap rubber fuel. These scrapers will last for many years, but they are usually lost before they wear out. Usually one or two can be quickly located somewhere within 20-50 cm of each pila's perimeter, although occasionally they drift out of this range. Sr. SN says that he and his father have always used scrapers of this sort. The size of the scrapers varies. The shoe-sole variety ranges 12-15 cm in length, 7.0-9.5 cm in maximum width, 3-6 mm in thickness, and 30-85 g in weight. The single scraper made from a piece of rubber tire was about 10.5 x 12.0 cm in area, 1.0 cm thick, and weighed 142 g. 2) Eight open plastic buckets with wire handles, used mainly to receive agua salada from the ends of the three pilas' drip-tubes and to hold quantities of clean water for various purposes. These are standard 20-liter vessels, widely available in hardware stores and local markets (Plate 2.7). Most measure about 30 cm in rim diameter, with nearly vertical walls, and stand about 35 cm high. One bucket has slightly flared walls, with a rim diameter of 34 cm, a basal diameter of 24 cm, and stands 29 cm high. When in use as receptacles for agua salada, they are placed below the drip-tube spout and covered with a piece of thin metal or rubber scrap so that dirt or rainwater does not get into the agua salada (Plate 2.8). The buckets generally last for several years before they need to be replaced. 3) Three square-to-rectangular plastic or metal containers, used mainly for shortterm storage of agua salada that has been removed from the circular receptacle buckets described above (each pila load produces about 30 liters of agua salada, and this cannot all be contained within the 20-liter buckets). These vessels are salvaged from a variety of contexts, and all originally had other uses; wire handles are added, if not already attached. Their only requirement is that they be sufficiently large and watertight. The three vessels here measure 15.5 x 24.0 x 51.0 cm, 22 x 22 x 40 cm, and 22 x 22 x 40 cm (last figure is vessel height) (Plate 2.7). When in use they are covered with pieces of metal or rubber scrap so that dirt or rainwater do not get into the agua salada (Plate 2.9). 4) One small plastic cylindrical vessel (originally a one-liter oil can), used for (a) transferring small quantities of agua salada and water from one vessel to another (usually from the receptacle bucket at the end of the drip-tube into the temporary holding vessel), (b) dipping out of the buckets small quantities of water for washing purposes, and (c) dipping agua salada from the large storage barrel (Plate 2.10). This vessel, salvaged from a nearby automobile garage, measures 9.0 cm in diameter and 14.0 cm high. Most of the time this vessel can be found floating on the surface of one of the larger liquid-filled containers described above. 5) Three bundles of small twigs bound with wire, one for each operating pila. These bundles are placed on one side of the top surface of a newly filled pila, and

34

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

water is poured into the pila through them (Plates 2.11, 2.14). The twig bundles thus absorb the force of the falling water so that the packed soil mixture remains undisturbed. These twig bundles measure 35-45 cm long by 5-17 cm thick (at the wire binder), and weigh 3lO-425 g. They are handmade from local bushes, and are replaced at intervals of several months. 6) Drip-tube filter plugs. These are thumb-sized wads of maguey fiber (ixtle), usually found inserted in the top of the drip-tube at the bottom of the pila pit. They are removed only for very short periods when the drip-tube is cleaned out at the beginning of each new leaching cycle, and thus are rarely seen on the ground surface. The plugs are replaced at intervals of about one year, and the old plugs are tossed aside in the vicinity of the pila. Consequently, the remnants of one or two plugs can sometimes be seen on the ground surface around the pilas edges. 7) Cloth filter (ixtapepextle) at the bottom of the pila pit, placed directly over the entrance of the drip-tube. This is a coarse piece of thick burlaplike cloth, measuring about lO x lO cm, which is placed over the drip-tube entrance, at the lowest point in the pila pit, just before each new batch of mixed soil is placed into the pila to begin a leaching sequence. The ixtapepextle is removed from its place only briefly when the leached soil is removed from the pila. The cloth filter lasts for many months, but ultimately it rots and decays through prolonged contact with moisture. 8) Ceramic olla for receiving agua salada from the spout of the drip-tube. Although plastic buckets are now used exclusively for this purpose at this workshop, ceramic ollas were traditionally employed. As recently as 1987 one of these ollas was still functioning after about 30 years of continuous use. About six months before my 1988 visit, however, this vessel finally broke and was tossed aside. It was still at the workshop, and we were able to draw (Fig. 2.6) and photograph it (Plate 2.12). When in use this vessel was buried up to its neck in the ground (as several still are at the nearby ICIMC workshops [Plate 2.13], and as was commonplace in the 1930s [Plate 2.14]), and was moved only once every few years when the old pila itself was abandoned. Its top would be covered with a large piece of metal or rubber scrap to prevent the entrance of dirt or rainwater. This vessel measures 42 cm high, 24 cm in rim diameter, 31 cm in maximum interior diameter, with an average wall thickness of 0.7 cm and a neck height of 10.0 cm. Its weathering pattern is very distinctive: the original exterior surface finish is completely corroded through chemical weathering, while the interior finish remains largely intact, even after 30 years of use (Plate 2.12). This vessel, and others like it that were once commonly used here, were originally obtained at the Texcoco market (the largest regional market in the eastern Valley of Mexico), but I have no further information about where they were made. 9) A large piece of old sheet metal, 80 x 120 cm in area, used to shelter a portion of the soil ridge within the workshop that is currently used as a source of pila-clalli soil.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

35

In and around the Boiling Hut (Fig. 2.4, Plate 2.15) Most of these utensils and materials are primarily associated with some aspect of the boiling operation. However, in some cases the boiling hut is used as a convenient and secure place to store tools (e.g., shovels and soil containers) used in diverse workshop activities. Furthermore, the fairly level area to the west of the boiling hut serves as a kind of general dumping ground for discarded utensils and other scraps or refuse produced at the workshop. A litter of this material occurs throughout this area west of the boiling hut, and to the east and south of it as well, and below I only mention the most notable of such deposits. The following items are generally found outside and around the boiling hut. 1) A large plastic barrel (L on Fig. 2.2), placed just outside the entrance to the boiling hut, used to store agua salada prior to boiling (Plate 2.10). This is a standard, heavy-duty vessel available at larger markets and hardware stores. It measures 80 cm high, with a maximum diameter (about half-way up its height) of about 50 cm, and rim and basal diameters of 42 cm. The open top is covered with a piece of metal or rubber scrap to prevent the entrance of dirt or rainwater. Commonly the vessel is one-quarter to one-third full of stored agua salada, although sometimes it is nearly full, or even empty, according to what degree boiling has kept up with the production of agua salada. This vessel is necessary because sometimes the boiling cannot keep up with the amount of agua salada on hand. Sr. SN says that agua salada can be stored for up to several weeks without any serious problems. 2) Two large plastic containers, placed about 3.0 m west-northwest of the boiling hut. These function to hold various kinds of saline liquids, the two most common being concentrated sal negra solution, which is sold in liquid form (see below), and the last remaining dregs of agua salada that remain in the boiling pan after the boiling operation is completed. This latter liquid, which still contains some salt in solution, is ultimately poured back into the workshop soil banks that are to be mixed with the new lakeshore earth for making fresh batches of salt (see above). The two vessels currently in use measure, 12 x 15 x 40 cm and 23 x 46 x 42 cm (third figure is vessel height). These vessels are salvaged from diverse contexts, and their only requirement is that they be sufficiently large and watertight. When in use the vessel tops are covered with pieces of metal or rubber scrap to keep out dirt and rainwater. 3) A cluster of worn-out and discarded metal, plastic, and ceramic containers, lying next to the two vessels just described above. These are the fragmentary remains of old containers once used to hold liquids. Portions of these discarded utensils are occasionally salvaged to make covers for containers currently in use. 4) Fuel pile, mainly composed of large fragments of old rubber tires and inner tubes, plus some tree branches. The fuel pile is located about 2.5 m west of the boiling hut (Plate 2.2). Also at this locality, resting atop one of the rubber tire sections, is a large iron knife used for cutting the tires into more manageable pieces. This knife (available in any local market or hardware store) has a blade 18 cm long

36

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

and 3.0 cm wide, with a wooden handle that measures 13 cm long and 3.0 cm wide. It lasts for many years, requiring only periodic sharpening. 5) Ash pile (G on Fig. 2.2), located about 3.0 m west of the boiling hut (Plate 2.16, foreground). Ashes from the stove inside the boiling hut are dumped here, and it is from this locality that ash used for various workshop purposes (see below) is removed. At the time of my visit this feature measured about 1.0 m in diameter and 50 cm high. 6) An old sheet metal boiling pan, now badly worn and rusted, that is pulled across the entrance to the boiling hut when Sr. SN is not present so as to prevent the entrance of stray dogs, domestic fowl, or small children. When not in use, the pan rests against the exterior north wall of the boiling hut. The pan measures 91 x 85 cm in area and 7.0 cm deep, and is made of sheet metal about 2 mm thick. 7) A large plastic tub, 46 x 63 x 43 cm, resting upside down about 2 m north of the boiling hut. A section of plastic mesh (from an old carrying bag), measuring 47 x 93 cm in area, has been stretched out flat atop the tub's upturned bottom surface. The tub is being used to provide a clean space for drying the plastic mesh. The mesh remained in place during the entire period of my study. Although I never learned its precise purpose, I suspect it is occasionally used as a drying cloth for the fresh salt. 8) A sharpening stone, used mainly for sharpening the iron knife when it is needed to cut up sections of the old rubber tires for use as stove fuel. This utensil is a fragment of a commercial circular stone-compound grinding wheel, measuring about 25 cm in diameter and up to 4.0 cm thick. When not in use it is usually placed against the exterior west wall of the boiling hut, just beside the structure's entrance. The following items are generally found inside the boiling hut (Fig. 2.4). 9) The boiling pan (paila), which rests atop the stove during boiling (Plate 2.17), and at other times is placed against the hut's interior south wall. This homemade utensil, made from common sheet metal (2.0 mm thick) available at larger hardware stores, measures 77 x 98 in area and 7.5 cm deep. Its exterior base and sides are blackened through use, and parts of its interior surface are encrusted with a thin, hard layer of salt. A boiling pan of this type normally lasts for two or three years before it rusts through and must be replaced. 10) Two pieces of heavy burlap cloth, used for drying the salt. Each of these cloths measures 70 x 60 cm in area, and both are heavily encrusted with salt crystals. When in use the cloths lie flat atop low earth platforms at the northeastern and southwestern corners of the boiling hut, and they function mainly to provide a clean, porous bed upon which the fresh damp salt can dry. When not in use these cloths usually are left lying on the prepared drying beds (camadas), but occasionally they may be placed at any convenient spot inside the workshop. The cloths generally last for many months, but eventually must be replaced as they deteriorate through contact with salt and moisture. 11) One iron rod, measuring 115 cm long and 1.0 cm in diameter. This is a section

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

37

Plate 2.10. SN Workshop, dipping brine from large plastic barrel at front of boiling hut.

Plate 2.11. SN Workshop, pouring water into loaded pila, howing rna s of twig used to absorb force of falling water.

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

38

Plate 2.12. SN Workshop. pottery vessel formerly used as brine receptacle. Scale

Plate 2.13.

= 50 cm.

Ie Workshop. buried ceramic brine receptacle still in use. Scale = 50 cm .

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

39

Plate 2.14. Las Salina saltmaking in 1930s, showing pila i u e. Photographed by Sodil Christen en. Courtesy of Irmgard W. Johnson, 1994.

40

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2. 15. SN Workshop, boiling hut. Scale

=50 cm.

Plate 2. 16. SN Workshop, central area, showing ash pile in foreground and lakeshore soil in bags at rear.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

41

of ordinary construction material, widely used throughout the region for reinforcing concrete walls, available at any large hardware store. This rod has two main functions. It is used to punch the hole for the pila drip-tube through the earth bank and into the bottom of the pila pit (this is done by repeatedly jabbing and pushing the rod through the earth at an appropriate angle). It is also occasionally used as a poker for stirring the fire inside the stove and pushing loose scraps of fuel into the fire. When not in use the rod usually rests against the central part of the hut's interior north wall. 12) Two heavy-duty metal containers used for carrying loads of earth from one place to another within the workshop. These containers do not have to be watertight, but they must be durable and capable of standing up to hard use. Both utensils have had one side reinforced by a block of wood, nailed in place along the vessel's rim, which serves as a sort of crude handle. One container is square in cross-section, measuring 23 x 23 cm in area and 35 cm high; the other is round, about 25 cm in diameter and 35 cm high. Both originally functioned as containers for construction material. When not in use they are usually placed on the floor of the boiling hut at any convenient location west of the stove. 13) One old metal bucket that serves as a stool upon which Sr. SN often sits while working inside the boiling hut. This rests on the hut floor along the interior west wall just opposite the stove. An informal cushion has been formed by placing several doubled-over sections of heavy-duty plastic sheeting atop the overturned bucket. This plastic sheeting is also used to cover areas of soil at the workshop that should remain dry when it rains. 14) Pile of scrap rubber fuel that occupies an area of about 50 x 110 cm along the hut's interior north wall, just inside the entrance (Plate 2.18). This material is periodically carried up from the main fuel pile to the west of the workshop in two large plastic bags. This is approximately the quantity needed for one complete boiling sequence (to boil the approximately 30 liters of agua salada from one pila load). IS) Two small brooms used mainly for cleaning up the surface of the mixing floor during and after soil mixing operations when quantities of particular types of loose soil (which should not get mixed up with other types of soil) get scattered about. One broom is homemade from twigs of local bushes tied together at one end: this measures 80 cm long, with a sweeping surface 17 cm wide. The second is the head of a commercially made, hard-grass broom, measuring 36 cm long and 17 cm in maximum width. When not in use these are usually placed somewhere along the inner north wall of the boiling hut. 16) Three iron-bladed shovels with homemade wooden handles, used for many different earth-moving tasks involving digging, mixing, and scraping soil in the workshop and at the lakeshore soil sources. Two are flat-bladed and one is roundbladed. All are common types available in any market or hardware store. The roundbladed shovel is used mainly to dig out and toss aside heavy masses of earth: for example, removing leached soil from the pilas, or preparing and smoothing the clay lining of the pila cavity during the initial stages of this activity before great care is

42

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

needed. The flat-bladed shovels are generally used for scraping, digging, or mixing operations when it is necessary to avoid disturbing or digging into the soil below the material being moved: for example, scraping loose soil up off the workshop mixing floor, or skimming off a thin layer of lakeshore soil, or digging out thin layers of leached soil. When not in use, the shovels are usually placed along the inner western wall of the boiling hut. The shovels are all similar in size. a) One flat-bladed shovel has an iron bit 23 x 28 cm in area that is hafted onto a wooden handle 60 cm long. The flat working edge of the shovel (23 cm wide) is considerably worn. Overall weight is 1.55 kg. b) The second flat-bladed shovel (which is considerably older and more worn than the first) has an iron bit 20 x 21 cm in area that is hafted onto a wooden handle 75 cm long. Overall weight is 1.50 kg. c) The round-bladed shovel has an iron bit 29 x 23 cm that is hafted onto a wooden handle 65 cm long. Overall weight is 2.4 kg. 17) A large wooden mallet (maso) that is used exclusively for pounding the surface of the newly dug pila pit (prior to putting on the clay lining) in order to make it more compact, more durable, and more impervious to the movement of moisture. This is a homemade tool, with a head formed from a piece of log into which has been fitted a long wooden handle (Plate 2.19). The mallet head, which has been strengthened by wrapping iron wire tightly around either end, measures 33 cm long and 13 cm in diameter; the handle is 95 cm long, with a cross-sectional area of 6.0 x 2.0 cm. The mallet's overall weight is 3.4 kg. When not in use this tool is stored along the interior west wall of the boiling hut. 18) Detached iron head of an old flat-bladed shovel, used as a scoop for removing the remaining dregs of agua salada from the bottom of the boiling pan after the day's boiling has been completed. A comparatively flat utensil is required for this purpose because of the need to remove a quantity of very shallow liquid from the flat-bottomed boiling pan. The slight upward curvature of the iron shovel blade prevents the liquid from flowing off as it is carried from one place to another. The utensil measures 20 x 24 cm in area, and weighs 0.6 kg. When not in use it is placed atop a brick that rests on the floor of the boiling hut at the southwestern corner of the stove. 19) Small metal can, with a one-liter capacity, used to carry small quantities of clean water into the boiling hut for washing out the interior of the boiling pan while it rests atop the stove. Additional water is sometimes carried into the hut in this fashion when the saltmaker needs to partially fill the boiling pan with clean water so that he can leave it overnight without any additional salt crystallizing out and forming a hard crust on the bottom of the pan. This is an old container for automobile oil. It measures 10 cm in diameter and 14 cm high. When not in use it rests atop the brick ledge where the top of the stove joins the inner south wall of the boiling hut. 20) Two small plywood boards used to shift masses of crystallized salt from place to place inside the boiling pan during the middle and late stages of the boiling operation (this prevents the newly formed salt crystals from sticking to the bottom of the

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

43

pan). The boards are also used to lift the dripping salt crystals out of the boiling pan onto the drying cloth. To perform the latter function, the two boards are held together in the form of a "V" so that the salt can be lifted out of the boiling liquid that still remains in the pan. Each board measures 18 x 30 cm in area and 5 mm thick, and along one edge of each board a narrow strip of the same plywood has been nailed to form a sort of handle. When not in use these utensils rest atop a small shelf situated about l30 cm above the floor level at the southwestern corner of the boiling hut (Fig. 2.4). 21) Small mass of jarilla (Stevia salicifolia) fronds used to skim off some of the foam that forms on top of the boiling liquid during the boiling operation. This also imparts a subtle, desirable flavor to the salt. The fronds are gathered fresh every few days from the area immediately around the workshop where they grow naturally in some abundance. The unused fresh fronds are stored on the small shelf at the southwestern corner of the boiling hut. 22) Glass bottle with candle used to provide illumination when boiling continues after dark. This rests atop a small wooden shelf situated 95 cm above floor level in the middle of the hut's inner east wall. 23) Large iron knife used for miscellaneous cutting and slicing operations inside the boiling hut: for example, cutting up pieces of scrap rubber fuel, and slicing the small piece of maguey leaf that is commonly placed in the boiling agua salada to facilitate crystallization (see below). This is an ordinary household knife of the type available at any market or hardware store. The iron blade is 12.5 cm long and 4.0 cm wide, and the wooden handle is 9.0 cm long and 4.0 cm wide. When not in use this tool is tucked into one of the overhead roof rafters for safekeeping. 24) Metal scraper used mainly for scraping accumulated quantities of compacted soil off the shovel blades in the course of various mixing and cleaning tasks. This is a piece of salvaged scrap metal, with a square body and one triangular side, that measures 8.0 x 7.0 cm in area and 1.5 mm thick. When not in use this tool is tucked into one of the overhead roof rafters for safekeeping.

The Ie Workshop (Fig. 2.7) The Ie Workshop is located at the southeastern corner of Las Salinas, about 150 m south-southwest of the SN Workshop (Plate 1.3). There are actually two adjacent saltmaking workshops at this locality, operated by a pair of brothers (Sr. Ie and Sr. MC): the Ie Workshop, described in this section, and the Me Workshop, described briefly in the next section. Sr. Ie is now 54 years old, and his brother is 43. When their father was still alive (until about ten years ago), this was a single workshop, operated jointly on a part-time basis by the father and two sons. Their father also worked as a part-time carpenter. Their paternal grandfather was a saltmaker at this same locality, and it is likely that a great-grandfather also made salt here. Since the

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

44

A

g}PI'., E F G

Implement Storage Residence Boiling Hut Abandoned Boiling Hut Pile of Fuel Bags of Soil Pile of Stove Ash Water Tap

H I J K L

F

o I

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I

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1

I

meters

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-z~

Figure 2.7.

Ie Workshop, plan.

L

45

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

,, '\

Pila A

,/

earth bank

drip tube

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em

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em

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Figure 2.8. Ie Workshop, pilas in cross-section.

drip tube

I

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olla-f,, ,

, I

, ,,

46

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.17. SN Workshop, pail a pan atop oven inside boiling hut.

Plate 2.18. SN Workshop, pile of rubber-scrap fuel inside boiling hut.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.19. SN Workshop, large wooden mallet (maso) in use for preparing pila leaching pit.

Plate 2.20. IC Workshop, central area, with lakebed oil being unloaded from burro cart.

47

48

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

time of their father's death the brothers have divided the old workshop into two separate sections, although they continues to share a common water tap and fuel pile. As boys and teenagers, both brothers worked with their father as part-time saltmakers. When Sr. IC was about 20 years old he opened a part-time barbershop in Nexquipayac, and soon thereafter he also began to work as a specialist in slaughtering domestic animals for other villagers. He continues to practice both these trades on a part-time basis. He has no sheep or cattle, but maintains three burros to pull two carts. He also has some ejido agricultural land where he raises barley for his burros, and maize and beans for his family's subsistence needs. Thus, Sr. IC has been involved in part-time saltmaking at this same locality for over 40 years, and for approximately a decade he has operated an independent salt workshop that provides him with a significant part of his income. At the present time the IC Workshop produces both sal blanca and sal negra, and a small quantity of sal amarillo, with a ratio of roughly 60:30: 10 for blanca, negra, and amarillo, respectively. There is no physical separation or segregation of the space and utensils used for the production of these different types of salt. Virtually all the salt produced at this workshop is sold to established customers within the local community, and to a few outside customers who purchase the sal negra for making camitas. At the time of my 1988 visit, Sr. IC was just beginning to get back to saltmaking after an absence of about three weeks occasioned by a painful arm injury. Consequently, my observations were made at a time when he was working shorter hours and at less than his normal capacity. His routine was to spend most of the morning hours at the workshop for about three or four days per week, occasionally working as late as about two o'clock p.m. During this period, and for much of the past few years, he has been assisted in saltmaking by his younger son, now 21 years old. Sr. IC resides about 800 m away in the central part of Nexquipayac, some distance from his workshop. Consequently, it is much less convenient for him to commute between his home and workshop for mid-day or evening meals, etc. (as Sr. SN is able to do much more easily). There is an adobe-brick structure, 4 x 5 m in area, in the central part of the IC Workshop, and prior to 1988 it contained two rustic cots and some cooking gear. However, since 1987 this structure has been converted into a full-time residence for an unrelated nuclear family with three small children, and Sr. IC no longer uses it for any workshop-related activities. The IC Workshop extends over an area of approximately 35 x 15 m atop a large mound 2-5 m high. The occupied adobe house mentioned above sits at the approximate center of the area (F on Fig. 2.7), and there are three well-defined and functionally distinct sub-areas described below. The Eastern Sub-Area This occupies an area of 12 x 8 m, and has three main components: the four pilas (A, B, C, and D on Fig. 2.7), positioned on the high ridges of soil that form the

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

49

easternmost edge of the workshop; a comparatively level surface of hard-packed earth used for mixing soil, in the low area below the pilas; and a storage area (E and J on Fig. 2.7) where soils, tools, and miscellaneous gear are kept. The Permanent Features The Pitas (Fig. 2.8). All four of the pilas have been in use for several years. Pila C is now considered abandoned, and it will not be used again. Thus, like the SN Workshop, there are three functioning pilas. The pilas themselves are virtually identical to those described at the SN Workshop, and they are made, used, and maintained in the same manner. Each pila consists of two main parts: a conical pit, and a drip-tube that leads from the bottom of the pit into a receptacle. The pits measure 90100 cm in diameter at the ground surface, and are 40-50 cm deep. The sides of each pit are coated with a specially prepared clay lining 1.0 cm thick. Each pila is positioned high enough such that the agua salada flows through a cane (or plastic) driptube into a receptacle below the pila. Ceramic Ollas. Like the one from the SN Workshop (Fig. 2.6), these are still used as agua salada receptacles, although two of the three in use are broken and only partially complete (Fig. 2.8). Only at Pila D is the receptacle intact, and here the vessel is permanently buried in the earth up to its neck, where it remains for several years throughout the life of the pila (Plate 2.13). While in this position the agua salada is hand-dipped out of the olla's interior with a small metal or plastic container. The ollas in use as agua salada receptacles are weathered exactly the same as the one observed at the SN Workshop: the finish of the exterior wall is completely eaten away, while the interior finish is still largely intact. The ollas are 50 cm in height, 40 cm in maximum diameter, 20 cm in rim diameter, and 0.7-1.0 cm in wall thickness. When in use, the agua salada receptacles are covered with flat pieces of scrap material (metal, rubber, or commercial roofing) in order to keep out dirt and rainwater. The drip-tubes are 2.5-3.0 cm in exterior diameter, measure 120-140 cm in total length, and project 30-40 cm beyond the face of the earth bank below the pila pit. Unlike the SN Workshop, filtration pads (ixtapepextle) are not used here to cover the upper end of the drip-tube at the bottom of the pila pit. Instead, after being loosely plugged with a small wad of ixtle fiber, this orifice is merely covered with a small mass of weedy vegetation about 5.0 cm thick. The Earth-Mixing Surface. This hard-packed earth surface measures approximately 3 x 3 m in area, and slopes gently downward to the west. On three sides (north, east, and south) it is bordered by steep-sided ridges of leached soil that have piled up to heights of 2-3 m above the level of the mixing surface. Bags and piles of unmixed soil are stored at the south edge of this area (J on Fig. 2.7), and it is to this point that the burro cart containing soil is brought to be unloaded (Plate 2.20). The Storage Area (J and E on Fig. 2.7). Area J is where different kinds of soil are kept before they are mixed together to be loaded into the pilas. Some care is taken to

50

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

5 I

I

!

I

I

em

Figure 2.9. Ie Workshop, hard-rubber scrapers, 3-5 mm thick.

prevent the accidental mixing of different types of soil, and commonly the material is kept in large plastic bags beneath a plastic tarp (Plate 2.21). When loose lakeshore soil is brought in for immediate use, it is usually piled up at the outer (northwestern) end of Area J. The area covered by stored soil varies a good deal in size, depending on how much surplus soil is currently on hand. At the time of my visit Area J measured 2.0 x 1.5 m. Area E is actually a small cave, approximately 2.0 m long by 1.0 m deep and 1.2 m high, that has been excavated into one of the soil ridges in order to remove previously leached workshop soil that is to be mixed with lakeshore soil for making sal ,?lanca. Although this cave area continues to supply some soil for this purpose, its primary function at present is to provide storage space for a variety of tools and utensils used in different kinds of workshop activities (Plate 2.22), described in the inventory below. The space between Area E and Area J serves as a kind of dumping ground for miscellaneous workshop refuse: fragments of broken ceramic ollas, discarded paper and plastic bags, bits of rubber scrap (including one or two old rubber tires waiting to be cut up for boiling fuel), old boots and shoes, and broken bits of wooden furniture.

51

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988 ""

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I

100 !

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centimeters

Figure 2.10.

Ie Workshop. boiling hut plan.

I

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52

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Portable Contents around the Edges of the Pilas (A, B, C, and D on Fig. 2.7) The drip-tubes and agua salada receptacles have already been described as components of the permanent pila features. The area around the pilas is usually clear and empty, and on a typical working day only the following utensils are likely to be found there. 1) Three hard-rubber scrapers (Fig. 2.9), one at the edge of each functioning pila (A, B, D). As at the SN Workshop, these are adapted from old shoe soles, and have smooth, slightly curved edges, measuring 15.0-16.5 cm in maximum length, 9.010.0 cm in maximum width, and 0.4 cm thick. These are used mainly for smoothing the sides of the pi la's clay lining after each leaching sequence. Occasionally they are also used to scrape earth off the blades of shovels as these tools are being used to remove the leached soil from the pila pit. 2) Two masses of small twigs, measuring about 30 x 15 x 7 cm and 20 x 20 x 7 cm, at the edges of Pilas D and B. Unlike those at the SN Workshop, these specimens lack wire holders twisted around their midsections. When in use, the mass of twigs is placed atop the newly loaded mixed earth in a pila pit, and serves to break the force of the water as it is poured into the pila. This prevents the packed earth inside the pila from becoming disturbed by the falling water.

Portable Contents in and around the Storage Cubicle (E on Fig. 2.7) 1) Two flat-bladed iron shovels. The iron blade of the larger shovel measures about 30 x 30 cm, and is fitted onto a homemade wooden handle 70 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. The smaller shovel has an iron blade 22 cm wide and 27 long, fitted onto a homemade wooden handle 85 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. Their main uses in this workshop are for mixing soil, for removing leached soil from the pila pits, and for skimming soil off workshop and lakeshore surfaces. 2) One large wooden mallet (maso), used for compacting the sides of a newly dug pila pit prepatory to lining it with clay. This is a homemade tool, with a cylindrical head formed from a block of wood about 11 cm in diameter and 30 cm long. The head is fitted into a wooden handle 70 cm long and 5 cm in diameter. 3) One large iron knife, used mainly for cutting up old rubber tires into fragments small enough to insert into the boiling hut stove. The blade, which measures 16 cm long and 2.5 cm wide, is fitted into a wooden handle 13 cm long and 3.0 cm wide (Plate 2.23). 4) One circular sharpening stone, for periodically sharpening the knife used to cut up rubber tires. This is a commercially made product, intended to be used as a grinding wheel. It is circular, measuring 24 cm in diameter and 2.0 cm thick (Plate 2.23). 5) Three plastic buckets, with wire handles, used mainly for holding clean water and pouring it into the loaded pi las, and for carrying agua salada from the pilas to the boiling hut. This is a common type of vessel, with a capacity of about 20 liters. They

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.21. IC Workshop, stored lakebed soil.

Plate 2.22. IC Workshop, tool-s torage area. Seale = 50 em.

53

54

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.23. IC Workshop. knife and sharpening stone.

Plate 2.24. IC Work shop , boiling hut exterior.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

55

are cylindrical, with nearly vertical walls, and measure about 35 cm high and 31 cm in rim diameter (Plate 2.22, foreground). 6) One commercial broom, used for sweeping the surface of the earth-mixing floor during and after mixing operations. 7) One small plastic container, with a capacity of one liter, used mainly for dipping agua salada or water from one vessel and transferring it to another container. This is a standard cylindrical vessel which originally held automobile oil. It measures 9 cm in diameter and 14 cm high. 8) One plastic jug, of about 5-liter capacity, used for holding pulque (fermented maguey sap) for the saltmakers' consumption during workshop activities. This is brought into the workshop each morning from Sr. IC's residence in Nexquipayac, and taken back there each afternoon.

The Western Sub-Area This is an area of approximately 6 x 4 m, along the side of a high soil ridge. There are four main components: a functioning boiling hut (G on Fig. 2.7); an abandoned boiling hut (H on Fig. 2.7), which was being torn down at the time of my visit; a flat area, 60 x 80 cm in area, just outside the entrance to the boiling hut, where the fresh salt is dried in the open air (K on Fig. 2.7); and an area just east of the salt-drying surface where fuel (one or two old rubber tires and other pieces of rubber scrap) is piled up, where ash from the stove is dumped, and where a variety of workshop debris (old containers, broken tools) accumulates.

The Permanent Features The Boiling Hut (Fig. 2.10, Plate 2.24). This is a crude structure, consisting of a space 2.0 x 3.0 m in area and 1.7 m high that has been dug into the side of the earth ridge. This space has been roofed over with sheets of scrap metal and commercial roofing supported by wooden beans laid across the top of the excavated space. The outer corner of the structure has been reinforced with a wall of crudely made adobe bricks. Most of the western half of the hut's interior is filled with a stove that measures 100 x 90 cm and 50 cm high, constructed of fired brick 12 cm thick. There is an opening, about 20 x 30 cm, in the front wall of the stove, through which fuel is inserted. An opening at the back (southwest) corner of the stove leads directly into a crude chimney formed of a length of metal stove pipe and two large metal buckets (whose bottoms have been removed) that project up through a hole in the roof. When in use the boiling pan rests on the flat top surface of the stove wall. An earth shelf, 15-20 cm wide, and level with the top of the stove wall, has been formed around the three inner sides of the stove. This shelf serves as a place to rest utensils and materials used during boiling operations. The doorless hut entrance is 60 cm wide.

56

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

The adjacent abandoned (and largely torn down) boiling hut appears to have been of about the same size and character as the functioning hut.

Portable Items inside the Boiling Hut 1) The boiling pan (paila). This is very similar to the pan in use at the SN Workshop.1t is homemade from sheet meta12 mm thick, and measures 75 x 80 cm and 7.5 cm deep. When not it use it is placed against the interior south wall of the boiling hut, just inside the entrance (Fig. 2.10). 2) A wooden stick used as a poker for the stove fire. This is an old broom handle, 70 cm long and 3.0 cm in diameter. When not in use it is generally placed on the earth shelf along the south side of the stove. 3) A small metal scraper used primarily for removing dirt from shovel blades. This is a piece of scrap metal, roughly triangular in form, that measures 8 x 10 x 10 cm and 2 mm thick. When not in use it is inserted for safe-keeping into a crack in one of the overhead roof rafters. 4) Two pieces of flat metal used for moving salt crystals around in the boiling solution inside the paila, and to lift the dripping-wet crystalline salt out of the paila and carry it over the to drying bed. These metal pieces are the functional equivalents of the two plywood boards at the SN Workshop. One of the metal pieces is an old shovel blade, measuring 20 x 25 cm; the second is an old piece of sheet metal that measures 15 x 30 cm. When not in use these are usually placed on the earth shelf at the edge of the stove. 5) Piece of plastic mesh, about 70 x 35 cm, used to provide a clean surface for drying salt on the drying bed just outside the hut entrance. This was originally a carrying bag. When not in use the mesh is usually hung from one of the hut's roof rafters in order'to keep it clean and dry.

Portable Items outside the Boiling Hut 1) One heavy-duty large plastic bucket, with a wire handle, used for carrying agua salada from the pi las to the boiling hut, and for holding clean water for filtration or miscellaneous washing operations. This is a standard 20-liter container, available at any hardware store or market. It has nearly vertical sides, measuring 31 cm in diameter and 35 cm high. When not in use it usually rests on the ground surface just outside the boiling hut. 2) One cylindrical metal container (which originally held paint), used for carrying water from place to place within the workshop, usually for washing purposes. This vessel measures 15 cm in diameter and 25 cm high. When not in use it is usually placed on the ground surface just outside the boiling hut entrance. 3) One small plastic bucket with a wire handle, with a capacity of 10 liters. This is used mainly for temporary storage of sal negra, just after the salt has been re-

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

57

\

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Figure 2.11. Me Workshop. plan.

moved from the boiling pan and just before it is set out to dry in the open air. The vessel measures 24 cm in diameter and 26 em high. When not in use it is usually placed on the ground surface just outside the boiling hut entrance. 4) One long wooden pole used to poke into the chimney from above so as to clear the vent and improve the draft. This measures about 2.5 m long and 3.0 cm in diameter. When not in use it is generally placed against the exterior east side of the boiling hut, just to one side of the entrance.

The Central Sub-Area This contains two features, both shared with the adjacent Me Workshop: a water tap (L on Fig. 2.7) and a fuel pile (Ion Fig. 2.7); these features are on the border between the two workshops. The fuel pile is 4.0 m in diameter and 20-30 em high

58

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.25. MC Workshop, scrap-rubber fuel pile. Scale

Plate 2.26. MC Workshop, boiling hut exterior.

=50 cm.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

59

(Plate 2.25). The water tap is 5.0 m east of the fuel pile. The fuel pile is placed so as to be accessible to a large flatbed truck which periodically hauls in the rubber scraps and other flammable materials. The water tap is linked via a section of rubber hose to the main municipal water pipe that runs along the dirt road about 25 m to the north. The tap does not supply much water, and it is subject to periodic breakdowns, but it is generally adequate for the needs of the two workshops.

The Me Workshop (Fig. 2.11) Like his brother, Sr. MC is a part-time saltmaker. He devotes a substantial amount of time to plant cultivation and animal herding, and he rarely spends more than three or four hours per day in activities directly related to saltmaking. However, he produces a significant quantity of salt, and the sale of this salt provides him with a significant share of his total income. Sr. MC did not wish to become involved in my study, and so I have only a rough idea of his workshop and his circumstances. In general, the MC Workshop is very like the IC Workshop, with similar kinds of operations, tools, procedures, and facilities. There are three main differences between the two: 1) The MC Workshop is somewhat larger, with two functioning boiling huts (E and F on Fig. 2.11) (Plate 2.26) and four functioning pilas (A, B, C, and D on Fig. 2.11). 2) The MC Workshop produces only sal blanca, and much of this is sold at a weekly market stall in the nearby town of Chiconcuac (3.8 km to the southeast of Nexquipayac). Sr. MC is the only Nexquipayac saltmaker who still maintains a stall at the Chiconcuac market. 3) The MC Workshop has a larger labor force. Sr. MC and his wife work here together much of the time, and they are periodically assisted by their two daughters, approximately 10 and 12 years old.

The Soils Used in Saltmaking: Types and Sources Soils used in saltmaking are acquired from two different kinds of sources: natural lakeshore deposits, and previously leached soils that have accumulated in functioning or abandoned workshops. Different varieties of both basic types are needed for the production of the three types of salt: sal blanca, sal negra, and salitre. Lakeshore and leached workshop soils must be properly combined and leached in order to produce a saline solution (agua salada) that when boiled will produce the desired type of crystalline salt. Although the lakeshore soils provide most of the salt content, they are useless without the addition of the leached workshop soils. Both my informants were quite adamant about this, insisting that the lakeshore soils alone are too "strong"

60

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

and would produce an agua salada solution which, when boiled, would dissipate as foam and fail to produce crystalline salt. Lakeshore Soils The lakeshore zone which contains soils suitable for saltmaking is locally referred to as tierra de terrero. Only a small proportion of lakeshore soil is good for saltmaking, however, and there are currently only five localities where such soils are known to be available in any abundance (Fig. 2.1). With one exception, all these lakeshore soil sources have been located by earlier generations of Nexquipayac saltmakers. Because of low demand, there has been little need to search out new lakeshore soil sources since the 1940s. However, both my informants were active in searches for soil sources in the 1940s, and they still remember much about how difficult they are to locate and what procedures are used to determine their quality and suitability for different kinds of salt. One informant (Sr. SN) himself located the Tlateles de Tepecthi source about five years ago. Potential lakeshore soil sources are recognized on the basis of surface appearance (most sources are very slightly mounded relative to surrounding terrain), color, and taste. Expertise in finding, recognizing, and distinguishing between suitable soils is acquired only after years of practical experience with the guidance of an expert tutor. Apparently, the best time of the year to look for soil sources is early in the dry season (October or November). At this time the earth has begun to dry out, but still retains some moisture. This combination seems to maximize the surface coloration that provides the most visible index of soil suitability (a kind of dark brownish-blue color, referred to locally as tierra azuleada). Once a potential soil source is located on the basis of its surface mounding and surface color, further information about its qualities is acquired by tasting small pinches of the soil in different parts of a localized area. The highest level of expertise is required to discriminate between subtle earthy flavors. Even after a good source has been located and used for some time, continued exploitation of the soil is not a routine or straightforward matter. These source localities contain a far higher proportion of good saltmaking soil than the lakeshore zone in general, but there is still a significant degree of internal variability. So, each visit to the "source" requires a period of searching out specific locations on the basis on surface color, taste, and slight mounding. Lakeshore soils suitable for saltmaking are classified by the saltmakers themselves into three basic categories: tierra picante, tierra dulce, and tequesquite. Tequesquite is used for making sal negra, while the terms tierra picante and tierra dulce are usually applied to soils appropriate for making sal blanca. However, the term tierra picante (and the approximately synonymous tierra salada and tierra salitrosa) is occasionally also used in reference to soil used for making sal negra. Tierra Picante (also Tierra Salada and Tierra Salitrosa). Literally picante means

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Plate 2.27. SN Workshop, digging out pilaclalli soil.

"sharp" or "biting," and the term tierra picante is applied to soils whose salts are strongly flavored, or which have substantial quantities of salt. The agua salada made from this kind of soil has a tendency to foam more strongly during boiling than agua salada made with tierra dulce. Tierra Dulce. Literally "sweet soil," this i a type of earth which contains significant quantities of salt, but which is deemed less harp or less biting than tierra picante. Agua salada made from tierra dulce foams much le s during boiling than agua alada made from tierra picante. My impre sion (and it is no more than that) is that tierra dulce has a lower salt content than tierra picante. Tequesquite. This, of course, is a Nahuatl-derived word. Robelo (1912:262) indicates that the word is formed of two Nahuatl roots: tetl = stone, and quixquitl = foaming, efflorescent. Cabrera (1984: 134) gi ves a useful full definition of the word: Sal natural compuesta de sesquicarbonato de so a y cloruro de sodio, que aparcce en forma de efflorescencias al evaporarse el agua de los lago salobre . La composicion puede variar segun la naturaleza de las aguas que 10 tienen en soluci6n. E pumilla, confitillo, cascarilla y polvillo son diver a clases de tequesquite, segun la finura de la sal.

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(Natural salt composed of sesquicarbonate of soda and sodium chloride, which appears in the form of efflorescences when water in salty lakes evaporates. The composition varies depending on the character of the water in which the salts are held in solution. Strands, lumps, crusts, and dust are different kinds oftequesquite, according to how fine the salt is.)*

Among the saltmakers in Nexquipayac today, the term "tequesquite" refers to lakeshore soil which is good for making sal negra. There are now only two important known sources of tequesquite (Tlateles de Tepectla and San Fernando, see below), and it appears to be distinctly less abundant and more difficult to locate in comparison with the lakeshore soils used for making sal blanca. The scarcity of known tequesquite sources may relate to the relatively low level of sal negra production. Leached Workshop Soils There are two basic subtypes of this class: soils derived from functioning, or recently functioning workshops (that is, at and immediately around the SN and lei Me Workshops); and soils from long-abandoned (nineteenth-century and earlier, including prehispanic) workshops. The former are leached soils, removed from pilas and tossed aside in the immediate workshop area; the latter are dug up in areas of very old workshops, usually several kilometers away from the functioning workshops. Leached Soils from Functioning Workshops Pila-clalli. This term refers generally to soil that has been removed from a pila after leaching, and tossed aside. All three of the workshops I observed were surrounded and underlain by great masses of this material. Sr. SN was very methodological about his sources of pila-clalli. For example, very shortly after his Pila B was abandoned (at about the time I began my study), the soil from this pila and its immediate environs began to be used to provide the main source of pila-clalli for the SN Workshop throughout the remainder of my stay. To acquire this soil, Sr. SN dug into the piled-up soil ridge at and around the old pila, digging steadily back into the ridge as additional soil was needed (Plate 2.27). He also protected the area from the rain by sheltering it with a large piece of scrap metal. Sr. Ie, on the other hand, was less systematic, and took soil from several different areas of abandoned pilas within his workshop. Sr. Ie tended to skim the soil off the surface, rather than digging deeply into the soil bank as Sr. SN did. When sal blanca is being made, the pila-clalli component is taken from an area where leached soil from sal blanca production has been previously tossed out. Similarly, when sal negra is made, it is necessary to get pila-clalli from areas where sal *My translation.

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negra has been produced in the past. At the SN Workshop, for example, whenever sal negra is being made, Sr. SN goes to the far southern end of the workshop (where sal negra was exclusively produced through the 1940s) to dig pila-clalli out of the old soil ridges in that area. Similarly, when Sr. IC is making sal negra, he gets pilaclalli from an abandoned workshop area, some 30 m to the south of his current workshop, where he and his father produced exclusi vely sal negra until the 1960s. Cama-clalli. This is leached workshop soil which has recently been used to support the drying cloth upon which the dripping-wet fresh salt is placed to dry after being removed from the boiling pan. A bed (camada) of loose soil (about 70 x 80 cm in area and 8-10 cm deep), taken from the general area of abandoned pilas in the workshop, is mixed with stove ash about once a week as the foundation for the drying cloth. As the crystalline salt dries atop the cloth, a considerable amount of salty brine drips down into the camada. After about a week of this use, the old camada is removed and replaced by a fresh one. The old camada soil, whose salt content has been increased by the drippings from three or four batches of drying salt, then becomes the cama-clalli component of the next soil mixture. Since a drying bed is not used in the preparation of sal negra (see below), the cama-clalli soil derives exclusively from the production of sal blanca, and is, in turn, only incorporated into earth mixtures intended for the production of sal blanca. Homo-clalli. This term (used only by Sr. IC) applies to soil dug up from around and under the stove (Spanish = homo) used for boiling the agua salada. This is actually a rather uncommon type of soil, and Sr. IC only made use of it because there was a recently abandoned boiling hut at this workshop where this material was abundant at the time of my study. In functional terms horno-clalli appears to be quite similar to cama-clalli, and Sr. IC was using it as a substitute for it.

Leached Soils from Long-Abandoned Workshops The generic term for this category is clalmanctli. In the words of Sr. SN, clalmanctli is "pila-clalli de antes" ("old pila-clalli"). There are presently three known sources of this material: Cerro Tepetzingo (3.3 km southwest of Las Salinas), Cerro Huatepec (4.5 km southwest of Las Salinas), and La Galera (4.4 km south of Las Salinas) (Fig. 2.1). Cerro Tepetzingo and Cerro Huatepec are natural hills, about 10-15 m maximum height, that rise abruptly from the lakeshore plain. Until late in the nineteenth century the ancestors of the modern Nexquipayac saltmakers had their main saltmaking workshops and residences on and around the edges of these hills, and there are good indications of both historic and prehispanic salt workshops at both localities (Parsons 1971 :93-94). La Galera (also known as Sosochictla) is an artificial mound, roughly 100 m in diameter and 1-2 m high, on the lakeshore plain next to the canalized Rio Papalotla. Saltmaking was conducted there until the 1950s, and the locality has remained abandoned since then.

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The Cerro Tepetzingo source supplies clalmanctli for both sal blanca and sal negra-from separate localities (discovered and identified on the basis of color, taste, and past experience). Today all the clalmanctli from Cerro Huatepec is used for making sal negra. Clalmanctli from La Galera appears to be used exclusively for making sal blanca, probably because this locality was used exclusively for making sal blanca in earlier years. Clalmanctli from these three sources is simply dug from the ridged areas that are scattered in discrete clusters around the perimeters of Cerro Tepetzingo and Cerro Huatepec, and over much of the mound surface at La Galera. The earth is carried back to the functioning workshops on carts or trucks (and earlier on the backs of burros or horses). At present, all three of these areas of long-abandoned workshops remain easily accessible and available to the Nexquipayac saltmakers. I neglected to determine whether formerly any annual payment was made to village authorities, as was done through the 1940s for the lakeshore soil sources (see below). I suspect there may have been. There is no modern settlement or agricultural land at any of the three sources, and their only present utility is as marginal pasture for livestock. It appears that the saltmakers' continuing access to the soils of these localities is secured by a combination of low demand and long-standing usufruct rights. The Lakeshore Sources (Fig. 2.1) Natural Lakeshore Deposits

Five of these are currently known to my two informants: San Fernando, Madero, Sta. Cecilia, Arenal, and Tlateles de Tepecthi. Except for the Arenal source (which has been virtually abandoned for two years), all continue to be used. Sr. SN uses the Madero source for most of the clalmanctli soil he uses for making sal blanca, and he gets all his tequesquite soil from the Tlateles de Tepectla source. Sr. IC and Sr. MC use the San Fernando and Sta. Cecilia sources to provide the clalmanctli they use for making sal blanca and sal negra. Sr. IC appears to have been the last person to use the Arenal source, about two years ago. None of the saltmakers own the land where their soil sources are located, although Sr. IC has an ejido field near the San Fernando source. The areas in question are all communal or ejido lands associated with several different villages: the Madero and Sta. Cecilia sources belong to La Magdalena Panoaya; the Tlateles de Tepectla source belongs to San Salvador Atenco; the San Fernando source belongs to San Cristobal Nexquipayac; and the Arenal source belongs to Sta. Isabel Ixtapan. Prior to the 1950s, when there were still several dozen saltmakers in Nexquipayac, access to soil sources was secured by a nominal annual payment from each saltmaker to the appropriate village authorities. Since the early 1950s, however, the great decline in local saltmaking has reduced the need for soil to such an extent that now village

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.28. Near Las Salinas in the 1930s, collecting lakebed soil for saltmaking. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

Plate 2.29. Near Las Salinas in the 1930s, collecting salt cruSls from lakebed. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

65

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.30. Near Las Salinas. at the San Ferdando soil source.

Plate 2.31. Near La Salinas. digging soil at San Ferdando source.

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Plate 2.32. Near Las Salina • facing south from Cerro Huatepec overlooking general area of Tlateles de Tepectla lakebed soil source.

Plate 2.33. Near Las Salinas. at Tlatele de Tepectla lakebed soil source.

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Plate 2.34. Near Las Salinas, at Tlateles de TepectiA lakebed soil source.

Plate 2.35. Near Las Salinas, at Tlateles de Tepectla lakebed soil source. Middle Postc\assic sherd caller

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Plate 2.36. Near Las Salina , at Tlateles de Tepectla lakebed oil source. Clo eup of Middle Po telas ic herd scaller.

authorities are apparently unconcerned about the needs of the few remaining saltmaker ,and the latter are free to take whatever they require without the payment of fees, or any other formal arrangements. In all case, the source areas are till largely wasteland. The local salt concentration is so high that agriculture is impossible, and in most ca es the immediate ource area does not even support the growth of the harp-edged grass ( acahui tIe) that flourishes over most of the lakeshore plain on land too saline for cultivation. Thus, the land that provide soil to the saltmakers is virtually u ele for both agriculture and herding, and 0 it i not particularly surpri ing to find so little official concern about it use by a few saltmaker . Since 1911, the lakeshore plain on the eastern side of Lake Texcoco has been a zone of agricultural reclamation (Rzedowski 1957:23-24). Large-scale drainage and flushing programs have slowly pu hed back marshland and reduced oil alinity, and agricultural land has slowly expanded westward. This activity has had a definite impact on the quality of some of the oil source used by the saltmakers: primarily the Arenal source, which ha been abandoned in the face of agricultural encroachment; the San Fernando ource, which ha been ubstantially reduced in size by encroaching agricultural land; and the Sta. Cecilia ource, which has recently been

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

partially plowed and planted in maize and barley (although the immediate soil-source locality there is still too saline for plant growth). At the present time, only the Tlateles de Tepectla source remains unaffected by agricultural expansion. A 1930s photograph of a saltmaker collecting soil suggests that the lakebed sourcearea zone was formerly much wetter than it is at present (Plate 2.28). This scene indicates that, at least during the rainy season, some crude ditching and banking facilitated the soil-collecting process and that the salty earth was collected as mud and placed in a basket for transport to the workshop. Another 1930s photograph (Plate 2.29) suggests that sometimes salty crusts were simply collected from the surfaces of shallow standing water in large ditches on the lakebed. I visited four of the lakeshore soil sources (Fig. 2.1), and below I provide a brief description of each. All noted distances from Las Salinas are straight-line measurements, and they should be increased by 10-20% to account for movement along roads and pathways. All four of these sources can be seen on Plate 1.1. San Fernando. Located 3.5 km southwest of Las Salinas, at the juncture between expanding agricultural land (to the north and east) and uncultivated lakeshore terrain (to the west and south). In 1954 this source was at the juncture of uncultivated dry land and standing water on a remnant of still-functioning lakebed. Today the broad expanse of the dried-up lakebed stretches away to the southwest (Plate 2.30), while newly plowed fields of maize, barley, and other crops encroach from the north. The soil to be used for saltmaking is skimmed off the surface of both plowed and unplowed ground (Plate 2.31). Sr. Ie and his son collected both tierra dulce and tequesquite soils from separate localities within an area about 50 m in diameter. Tlateles de Tepectla. Located 5.4 km southwest of Las Salinas, in an area of comparatively undisturbed lakeshore plain (Plate 2.32). In 1954 this was a zone of standing water at the edge of Lake Texcoco, and the immediate source locality was an area of naturally elevated ground around the edges of the standing water. This source was first located and used by Sr. SN in 1984, and it is apparently the only recently located new soil source in the region. Today the locality stands out as a zone of irregular low natural elevations (perhaps old sand dunes at the edge of an ancient lakeshore), much of which is thickly overgrown with sharp-edged sacahuistle grass (Plate 2.33). The localities from which soil is collected are slightly elevated, grass-free areas (Plate 2.34). At the western edge of the source area I found a substantial concentration of Aztec I (Middle Postc1assic, ca. A.D. 1100-1200) surface pottery extending over an area about 50 x 20 m (Plates 2.35, 2.36). The function of this small prehispanic site, which lies just outside our 1967 Texcoco Region survey area, is problematical. It might have had something to do with saltmaking, but it might just as well have had something to do with hunting ducks or harvesting reeds or collecting edible insects in the lakeshore swamps and ponds. Sta. Cecilia. Located 5.3 km south-southwest of Las Salinas, just east of the canalized Rio Papalotla. In 1954 this locality was at the juncture between cultivated and uncultivated land. Today this source is situated in a large pocket of uncultivated

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lakeshore plain bordering newly reclaimed agricultural land on the east and south (Plate 2.37). Parts of the edges of the source area have even been plowed, although as yet no crops have actually been successfully planted there. The unmodified lakeshore land here is thinly covered with sharp-edged sacahuistle grass, with numerous grass-free patches from which the soil for saltmaking is skimmed off (Plate 2.38). On the day I accompanied Sr. IC and his son to this locality, they collected both tierra dulce (for sal blanca) and tequesquite (for sal negra) from separate patches within an area less than 50 m in diameter. Madero. Located 5.0 km south of Las Salinas. Like the Sta. Cecilia source, this is another large area of unmodified lakeshore terrain in a region of expanding agriculture. In 1954 this area was on the border between agricultural land (to the east), and uncultivated land, to the west. Today much of the immediate source area is thickly covered with sacahuistle grass, but there are numerous grass-free patches (Plate 2.39). The largest and highest of these grass-free patches provide most of the soil for saltmaking. Sr. SN uses this locality as a source for tierra dulce and tierra picante for making sal blanca.

Long-Abandoned Workshops I briefly visited two of these (Cerro Tepetzingo and Cerro Huatepec). I also passed within about 50 m of the third, La Galera, but glimpsed it only in passing from across the RIO Papalotla. All three are untouched by any kind of agricultural activity, and today serve only as marginal pasture for domestic livestock. Cerro Tepetzingo. Located 3.3 km southwest of Las Salinas. The hill itself is a locally prominent natural feature, measuring about 425 m long and 165 m wide, and rising to a maximum elevation of about 15 m above the level of the surrounding lakeshore plain (Plate 2.5). There are good signs of late prehispanic occupation over much of the hill (which at that time would probably have been an island in a marshy lakeshore plain) (Parsons 1971 :92-94). Local oral tradition identifies this hill as the locus for two kinds of nineteenth-century saltmaking. First, the ancestors of the modern Las Salinas residents comprised a specialized saltmaking community of roughly 100 people until they were forcibly removed about a century ago by the local hacienda owner. Second, it was the site of large-scale, commercial production, initiated by the hacienda owner after the household producers were removed. Traces of both kinds of nineteenth-century activity are still clearly visible, and Sr. SN took me to the remnants of his great-grandfather's saltmaking workshop (Plate 2.40). It is from these old workshops scattered thickly around the perimeter of Cerro Tepetzingo that the modern saltmakers at Nexquipayac have long acquired much of their clalmanctli soil. Since many of the old soil ridges are thickly littered with prehispanic surface pottery (Plate 2.41), it is easy to imagine how this prehispanic material might come to be incorporated in the leached soil deposits of distant modern workshops, and thus confuse the archaeologist about the extent of prehispanic

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.37 . Near Las Salinas, overlooking Sta. Cecilia lakebed soil source.

Plate 2.38. Near Las Salinas, digging soil at Sta. Cecilia lakebcd soil source.

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Plate 2.39. Near Las Salinas, Madero lakebed soil source.

Plate 2.40. Near Las Salinas, remain of nineteenth century altmaking work hop on flank of Cerro Tepetzingo.

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Plate 2.41. Near Las Salinas, remains of nineteenth century salt making workshop on flanks of Cerro Tepetzingo. Closeup of sherd scatter at base of soil bank.

Plate 2.42. Near Las Salinas, facing north at Cerro Huatepec.

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saltmaking. Although I saw no prehispanic surface pottery at Las Salinas during my study, I actually examined only a tiny part of the total area there. More intensive and systematic searching might well produce such prehispanic pottery. If so, the ultimate source of the material might well have been Cerro Tepetzingo. The traces of commercial saltmaking are also clearly visible on the west side of the hill where there is a large cluster of stone-walled ruins known as "La Fabrica." Local oral tradition identifies this place as the locus of a late nineteenth-century saltmaking factory, managed by a North American in collaboration with the local hacienda owner. Sr. SN told me that this production facility used techniques that were much different from the local procedures, and ultimately failed because of technical incompetence. Cerro Huatepec. Located 4.5 km southwest of Las Salinas. The hill is smaller than Cerro Tepetzingo, measuring about 225 m long, 125 m wide, and somewhat less than lO m high (Plate 2.42). Like Cerro Tepetzingo, Cerro Huatepec is covered with clearly visible traces of both late prehispanic and nineteenth-century saltmaking, and the two hills (situated about 850 m apart at the edge of the marshy lakeshore) are connected by an artificial causeway, probably prehispanic (Parsons 1971 :92-94). The old workshops around the perimeter of the hill, with their piled-up ridges of leached soil, provide the source for clalmanctli soil extracted by the modern Nexquipayac saltmakers. Although the Cerro Huatepec source was once quite important for modern saltmaking at Nexquipayac, today it is much less exploited than the less-distant Cerro Tepetzingo. Ash Deposits Used in Saltmaking There are two principal categories of ash deposits: workshop ash, and household refuse (referred to by Sr. SN as tierra limpia de los pueblos). Workshop Ash. Most of this is ash that is periodically removed from the stove in the boiling hut and piled up at some convenient spot (e.g., G on Fig. 2.2). The ash is used in two ways. First, it is mixed with the leached workshop soil to prepare the drying bed (camada) for the dripping-wet fresh salt, and mixed directly with the lakeshore and pila-clalli soils to prepare the final mixture to be packed into the pila. In these contexts, substantial quantities of stove ash make their way into the earth mixtures leached in the pilas. Second, it is scattered over the surface of the pi la's clay liner at the beginning of each new leaching sequence. This helps prevent the packed soil mixture inside the pila from sticking to the clay liner. Both my informants agree that the ash acquired in previous years from traditional plant and animal fuels was more suitable for their needs. Household Refuse (Tierra Limpia de los Pueblos). Household refuse was formerly used in the preparation of saltpeter (salitre). It is composed of ash refuse from domestic middens that accumulated around residences (prior to about 40 years ago), when people still used predominantly plant and animal fuels for household cooking.

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According to Sr. SN, two neighboring villages supplied most of this material for the Nexquipayac saltmakers: San Salvador Atenco (3.0 km south-southeast of Las Salinas) and San Francisco Acuexcomac (2.3 km to the southeast) (Fig. 2.1). The saltmakers would make periodic expeditions to collect this material, hauling it back to their workshop in large bags tied atop their burros. Apparently, one of the key visual signs of the material's suitability for making saltpeter was the presence of small crystals on the surface of the ash piles, and the saltmakers would search carefully for these as they selected the best ash refuse to haul back to their workshops. Since the 1940s there has been both a declining demand for saltpeter and a declining availability of household ash suitable for making saltpeter as bottled gas and kerosene replaced nonfossil fuels. Sr. SN indicates that it has been more than 40 years since any significant quantity of household ash was collected and used in saltpeter production.

Collecting and Transporting the Soil Today two different means of transport are used for hauling soils from the lakeshore source areas to the workshops: motorized flatbed trucks, in which several tons can be carried in one trip, but which can only operate during the dry season; and burro carts, which can carry no more than a few hundred kilograms of soil per trip, but which can operate year-round. One of my informants (SN) uses a combination of truck and cart, while the other (IC) uses a burro cart exclusively. Prior to about 25-30 years ago all soil was transported in large bags on the backs of burros. The SN Strategy: A Combination of Truck and Cart Transport Sr. SN likes to transport as much soil as possible by flatbed truck. This is complicated by the fact that he does not own a truck, nor does he have direct access to one. However, during the past few years he has been successful in acquiring the services of such a vehicle (usually by renting or borrowing from a friend or acquaintance) for a period of one or two days per year. There are several large brickmaking establishments right next to Las Salinas, and flatbed trucks are in daily use there for the transport of bricks. These trucks are available to the saltmakers, provided they can afford to rent them or have the right social connections. Sr. SN's preference is to haul in lakeshore soil sufficient for a whole year's saltmaking during a couple of days' work late in the dry season, when the local dirt roads and pathways are passable for motorized vehicles. Although he is never completely successful in realizing this objective, he usually manages to move most of the soil he needs this way. The remainder is brought in by burro cart, most of it during the dry season, but occasionally at other times of the year as well. Sr. SN says that his annual needs of lakeshore soil amount to about six truck loads.

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This system has several advantages and several disadvantages. The main disadvantages are: (1) the truck is relatively expensive to rent and access is uncertain; (2) most of the hauling must be done over a very short period of time, creating a frenzied schedule and a disruption of normal routines; and (3) some provision must be made for long-term storage of large quantities of different kinds of soil, all of which must be kept separated and well protected from the elements and from contamination. The primary advantages are: (1) little additional effort need be expended to collect soil over the rest of the year, and the serious problems associated with moving heavy loads along muddy roads and pathways during the rainy season can be avoided; and (2) most of the soils used at the workshop throughout the year can be selected during the dry season when they are easiest to recognize and identify on the basis of surface color and appearance. Furthermore, since such a large proportion of the soils are collected from a few localities over a short time period, a more consistent quality of salt is produced at the workshop over the entire forthcoming annual cycle. This is usually an asset. However, if any significant errors of judgment were made in selecting the soils, then it could turn out to be a major disadvantage. As I indicated earlier, Sr. SN's normal procedure is to go out to the lakeshore soil sources at some time fairly early in the dry season, usually in October or November, to select the soils for the coming year. The best time for spotting the surface signs of good soil quality-dark blue-brown color and concentrations of fine gray-white salt crystals-is after the main rains have ended, but before the surface soil has thoroughly dried out. At this time of year Sr. SN spends several days searching out the best localities at the Madero and Tlateles de Tepecthi sources (which provide most of his lakeshore soil needs). With his flat-bladed shovel he skims off the top few centimeters of surface soil at the localities he selects, and piles this soil up in large mounds that can be easily located later later in the dry season when he can come out with a truck to collect the earth and haul it back to his workshop. During the dry season the mounds of soil can apparently be left out in the open air for periods of up to several months without ill effects. If suitable arrangements can be made for the use of a truck, the piled-up earth is brought into the workshop over the course of one or two days sometime between January and May. If such arrangements prove difficult, then Sr. SN must haul the earth back piecemeal in his burro cart, making many trips over a more lengthy period. The burro cart is also used to haul in loads of clalmanctli soil from the old workshops on Cerro Tepetzingo. Relative to the large quantities of lakeshore soil required, the need for clalmanctli soil is quite modest, and so its transport is simple by comparison, and a few trips with the burro cart are usually sufficient.

The IC Strategy: Exclusive Reliance on Burro Cart Transport Because Sr. IC relies exclusively on his burro cart for transporting soil, he must make many more trips than Sr. SN back and forth between the lakeshore sources and

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.43. Near Las Salinas, hauling soil on burro cart from Sta. Cecilia source.

Plate 2.44. Near Las Salinas, digging soil at San Fernando source.

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his workshop (Plates 2.20, 2.43). Although it would be possible, and advantageous, for him to haul soil by burro cart exclusively during the dry season (because of the much better condition of the roads and pathways for wheeled vehicles), in practice he usually keeps only a small store of soil, sufficient for no more than one or two weeks' production, at the workshop. Consequently, he makes soil-collecting expeditions at least once every two weeks throughout the year. The main advantages of this system are: (1) it is inexpensive and dependable (the burro and cart are maintained and used for a variety of activities, so they are always on hand); and (2) it is easy to store small quantities of soil at the workshop at any given time. The main disadvantages are: (1) heavy loads must be hauled over muddy roads and pathways during the rainy season; (2) patches of suitable lakeshore soil must be located during the wet season, when they are more difficult to find; (3) the salt quality is less consistent because of the much greater diversity of raw materials that come into the workshops for processing over an annual cycle; and (4) shortterm drops in salt production are possible if, for some reason, the next weekly or semi-monthly soil-collecting expedition cannot be undertaken on schedule (as happened, for example, when Sr. IC injured his arm and was unable to do any heavy work for nearly a month just before my study began). Sr. IC prefers to locate patches of good soil at the lakeshore source areas during the dry season (when they are most visible due to conditions of surface color and appearance). When such a procedure is followed, the soil is skimmed off the ground surface with a flat-bladed shovel and piled up in large mounds to await future transport back to the workshop (Plate 2.44). However, because he lacks sufficient time during the dry season to locate and pile up enough soil to last the full year, Sr. IC is also forced to search out suitable soil patches during the wet season. Because he is an expert, he is able to perform this wet-season prospecting with a fair degree of success. However, because of the inherent difficulties of rainy-season soil prospecting, he inevitably has trouble obtaining the best soils for his needs, and the variable quality and consistency of the salt he produces reflects these problems.

Hauling Soil in the 1930s and 1940s Prior to the 1950s, all soil was transported on the backs of burros (and, much more rarely, on horses), and no carts or trucks were used. This has some important implications for the organization and energetics of soil transport. One burro pulling a two-wheeled cart can transport up to 600 kg of soil per trip. Although I have no precise figures on how much weight a pack burro can carryon its back over the distances involved, I doubt that this would exceed 100 kg. Exclusive reliance on pack animals means that many more burros would be needed than at present, or that much more time would have to be devoted to soil transport, or both. Both conditions

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.45. SN Workshop, stored lakebed soil. Scale = 50 em.

Plate 2.46.

Me Workshop, stored lakebed soil.

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81

Plate 2.47 . SN Workshop, bags of tequesquite soil at edge of mixing floor. Scale = 50 em .

were true during the period, 40-50 years ago, when my two informants first became involved in saltmaking. During their youth, both my informants had extensive experience with hauling soil on pack burros. Sr. Ie told me that when he and his father and brother were all working together, they maintained nine pack burros for transporting soil. Soil-collecting expeditions were undertaken each week in order to acquire sufficient soil for the next week's saltmaking. Usually four or five burros would be used in these expeditions, but occasionally all nine animals were used. Sr. Ie says that one man could effectively manage only three loaded burros at a time, and so when all nine burro were used, all three men were needed. Sr. SN provided comparable information, but he indicated that one man could manage up to five burros (perhaps this reflect the fact that SN and his father were a two-man team, while Ie and his father and brother comprised a three-man unit). Sr. SN also indicated that one full day per week was needed to collect and transport the soil needed for a week of salt production. On those days, the usual procedure was to, in a single day, locate the earth, dig it up, load in onto the burros, and transport it back to the workshop. Each loaded burro carried one large ixtle-fiber bag (cerron) on its back. Each cerr6n was double-sided, with each side resting on one of the burro's flanks. Sr. SN remembers that their workshop required six cerrones (i.e., six burro load) of lakeshore

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

soil for the 15 boils (quemas) they did each week at their two-man workshop. Sr. IC recalls that sometimes as many as nine burro loads of lakeshore soil were needed to supply the 18 boils they did each week at their three-man workshop. Clearly, prior to the late 1950s transporting lakeshore soil was much more labor intensive than it has been over the last two or three decades.

Storing Soils at the Workshops Several different kinds of soils are brought into the saltmaking workshops in comparatively large quantities. Consequently, they must be stored so that they are protected from the elements (especially rainfall) and in such a way that they do not become intermixed before the proper time. These storage requirements are most acute in the case of a workshop (like that of Sr. SN) where very large quantities of soil are brought in over short time periods. As we noted earlier, both the SN and ICIMC Workshops have space reserved exclusively for soil storage, and both workshops use large sheets of heavy plastic to protect piles of stored earth. At the SN and IC Workshops most of the protected stored soil stands out in the open, in large piles (Plate 2.45). At the MC Workshop, a shallow cavelike opening has been dug into the side of an earth ridge to create storage space (Plate 2.46). All three workshops also make significant use of heavy-duty 50-kg plastic bags in which to store and protect soil. These plastic sacks are particularly useful when different kinds of soil must be moved around within the workshop area prior to being mixed. The latter point became abundantly clear to me one morning when I arrived at the SN Workshop after an absence of two days. I was startled to see a massive pile of earth-filled plastic bags at one side of the workshop (Plate 2.47) in a space which had been completely empty at the time of my last visit. I learned that these bags contained tequesquite soil (from the Tlateles de Tepectla source) that was to be used over the coming week for making sal negra. The sacks of tequesquite had just been carried into the workshop from a special storage location alongside Sr. SN's house, some 50 m west of the workshop itself. The storage of this material in plastic bags facilitated both its protection from rainfall and its transportability from storage to workshop when needed for saltmaking. There is a comparable kind of plastic-bag storage of different soil types at the IC Workshop, although on a much smaller scale (Plate 2.21). Despite its present-day universal abundance at saltmaking workshops in Nexquipayac (and throughout modern Mexico), plastic sheeting and plastic bags have been in common use in this region for less than three decades, and even as recently as twenty years ago they were still unusual in Nexquipayac. In the pre-plastic era, saltmaking soil was stored in several specially built small adobe-brick structures that were common features at all saltmaking workshops prior to the late 1960s. None of these structures now survives.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

83

Mixing the Soils to Be Loaded into the Pilas The component soils of each new leaching batch are combined on the workshop mixing floor shortly before the pilas are loaded. There is some variability in how much soil is mixed at once and how quickly all the mixed soil is loaded into the pilas. For example, Sr. SN prepares enough to last for an entire week's production (nine individual pila batches), whereas Sr. IC prepares a much smaller quantity, sufficient only for a single pila-loading (three pila batches, or sometimes even less). Sr. SN feels that the main advantage of preparing a large quantity is that it provides uniformity and consistency for the entire week's salt production. Of course, if there are any significant errors of in selecting and mixing the ingredients, then the saltmaker may be stuck with a poor batch for the entire week. With smaller batches, greater variability in the salt's color or taste might be expected over the course of a week. Mixing larger batches also means that a larger mixing floor is needed, and that the remaining mixed soil awaiting use over the next few days must be properly stored and protected from the elements for that length of time. Whatever the absolute quantity or the specific end product, the procedure for mixing soil is the same at both workshops. The different component soils are first piled together on the mixing floor, and then they are carefully mixed together with a flat-bladed shovel. Both my informants stressed, both in word and action, that proper soil mixture is a primary determinant of salt quality and consistency. My best information on soil mixing comes from the SN Workshop. I will describe the general procedures there for sal blanca and sal negra, and then provide some supplementary observations from the IC Workshop.

The SN Workshop: Preparing the Sal Blanca Mixture Four basic tools are used to mix salt at the SN Workshop: (1) two rugged metal containers, both with a special wooden block nailed along one side to provide a crude handle, to carry soil from storage to mixing floor (each of the containers has an average capacity of 17.5 kg of soil); (2) a flat-bladed shovel, with which to mix the different soil components together on the mixing floor; (3) a broom, with which to sweep up loose soil on the mixing floor and on the ground surface around the storage piles; and (4) a small metal scraper, used during the course of mixing to periodically remove encrusted dirt from the shovel blade. There are three main components of the sal blanca soil mixture: (1) tierra dulce soil from the Madero lakeshore source; (2) pila-clalli soil from the area of (abandoned) Pila B in the immediate workshop; and (3) a mixture of stove ash and camaclalli (drying bed soil) from the immediate workshop. Although Sr. SN does most of his weekly soil-mixing on Saturday, the process actually gets underway on Friday afternoon when he digs out the pila-clalli soil he will need from the soil ridge at the north edge of the mixing floor (right at the edge

84

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.48 . SN Workshop. breaking up soil clods in mixing operation.

Plate 2.49. SN Workshop. adding old brine to soil mixture.

Sallmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.50. SN Workshop. scooping out lakebed soil from storage pile.

Plate 2.51 . SN Workshop. hauling soil from storage area to mixing floor.

85

86

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.52. SN Workshop, preparing soil for mixing.

Plate 2.53. SN Workshop. sweeping soil-storage area.

SaLtmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.54. SN Workshop, mixing soil.

Plate 2.55. SN Work hop, pulverizing hard soil lump in mixing operation .

87

88

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 2.56. SN Workshop, mixing soil, showing lateral movement of soil pile.

Plate 2.57 . SN Workshop, sweeping mixing floor.

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

Plate 2.58. SN Workshop, flattening soil pile at end of mixing operation.

Plate 2.59. SN Workshop. covering mixed soil for overnight ~ i l t :t:r.

89

90

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

of recently abandoned Pila B, Fig. 2.2). This is accomplished by using the flat-bladed shovel to gouge out and shave off a sufficient quantity of soil (Plate 2.27). The necessary quantity of pila-clalli soil is estimated by eye; Sr. SN has developed a remarkable ability to estimate visually the amount needed for a week's production. When the pila-clalli soil has been dug out, it is piled up at one edge of the mixing floor, and the larger clumps of soil are broken up with repeated blows with the flat side of the shovel (Plate 2.48). Finally, to the pile of pila-clalli soil (which measures 120 x 120 cm in area and 35 cm high) is added about 15 liters of salty water (used the day before to clean out the boiling pan, and saved for this purpose in order not to lose its salt content) (Plate 2.49). The pile of pilla-claIIi soil is then covered with a plastic sheet in anticipation of its use the following day. On Saturday morning the main mixing begins. The first step is to remove the plastic sheet from the top of the main pile of stored lakeshore soil (J on Fig. 2.2). Then, with the flat-bladed shovel, Sr. SN digs out a substantial quantity of earth from the pile, and heaps it up in a convenient mound. He then fills the two carrying containers with soil (Plate 2.50), carries them up to the mixing floor (Plate 2.51), and dumps the soil next to the pila-clalli soil that was piled there the day before (Plate 2.52). This is repeated 18 times until the contents of36 containers (about 626 kg) have been carried up and deposited on the mixing floor. At this point, before proceeding any further, Sf. SN returns to the main storage pile (J), sweeps up the loose dirt from around its base (Plate 2.53), and replaces the plastic sheet atop the storage pile. Returning to the mixing floor, Sr. SN adds the next component to the growing pile of ingredients. This is cama-c1alli soil, from the two foundation beds that supported the drying cloths upon which the dripping-wet fresh salt is placed immediately after removal from the boiling pan. The cama-c1alIi soil is ordinary pila-clalli soil (originally taken from the vicinity of Pila B) which has been enriched by the saline drippings from the fresh salt that has dried on top of it over the preceding week. Ten container loads (174 kg) of cama-clalli soil are added to the pile of ingredients on the mixing floor, including one or two container loads of stove ash from the ash pile (G on Fig. 2.2). The ash is added in order to produce a looser consistency in the final mixture, and thereby facilitate the leaching process in the pila. Once these ingredients are all assembled, the mixing can begin. Up to this point Sr. SN has worked for about two hours to get ready for the mixing operation (plus another half hour he spent assembling the pila-clalli soil on the mixing floor on Friday afternoon). The actual mixing of the three main ingredients (36 containers of tierra dulce, about 27 containers of pila-clalli, and 10 containers of cama-clalli-ash mixture, amounting to approximately 1270 kg total weight) takes about an hour of hard labor. This is accomplished by using the flat-bladed shovel to fold the whole pile of ingredients over on top of itself at least two times, and sometimes three times (Plate 2.54). In the course of this mixing the remaining large soil clumps are pulverized with the back of the shovel blade (Plate 2.55), and the whole pile shifts laterally southward about 3.0 m across the mixing floor surface (Plate 2.56). As the pile shifts laterally,

Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1988

91

the surface of the mixing floor is periodically swept clean, and the loose material swept back onto the main pile (Plate 2.57). At the end of the mixing sequence the top of the mixed pile is pounded flat with the shovel blade (Plate 2.58). Traditionally, at this point the shovel blade is used to mark the top of the soil mound with the sign of a cross. The pile is then covered with a plastic sheet (Plate 2.59) for protection against rain and dirt. This is the material which will be loaded into the pilas during the coming week. The SN Workshop: Preparing the Sal Negra Mixture Although the specific ingredients may vary, according to whether the soil mixture is being prepared for the production of sal blanca or sal negra, the mixing procedures described above are basically the same for whatever type of salt is involved. However, there are a few significant differences. As noted earlier, Sr. SN makes very little sal negra, and all that he does make is to fill special orders that he receives occasionally from long-established clients. When saltpeter (salitre) was made here prior to the 1950s, the mixture-preparation procedures would be essentially identical to those for sal negra, with the addition of a significant quantity of household ash refuse (tierra limpia de los pueblos). The basic ingredients for the sal negra soil mixture are: (1) clalmanctli soil from long-abandoned workshops on Cerro Tepetzingo; (2) tequesquite soil from the Tlateles de Tepectl

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ing. Banos and Sanchez (1998:77) believe the fabric-marked pottery at XocotitHin was probably manufactured at this locality, and that it was used exclusively for packaging and trading the finished salt. I still suspect that TFM pottery may have played some role in the final drying of the crystalline salt in a low-heat context, perhaps in or around a low-burning hearth fire (as suggested by Sisson [1973:93, 98] for saltmaking in the Tehuacan Valley, Puebla). Nevertheless, it now seems probable that TFM pottery was used for packaging and redistributing crystalline salt (an idea that has been around for over 40 years [Mayer-Oakes 1959:367-68], but which had never previously been subjected to adequate testing). Given the variation in form and volume of the TFM vessels, it appears that there was some effort to produce salt for exchange in standardized quantities and shapes. Talavera (1979:85-86) suggests that coarse salt may have been packaged in one vessel form, while fine-grained salt was placed in another. It seems inherently logical that major saltmaking workshops would have produced most of the low quality TFM pottery required for drying and packaging their salt, as the Xocotitlan data may indicate. Ongoing neutron activation studies by Leah Minc (1999) should help understand the extent to which production ofTFM pottery was centrally or locally managed, as well as the distributional patterns of the packaged salt from different workshops. Over 40 years ago, Tolstoy (1958:53) pointed to the general similarities in paste, temper, slipping, and firing between TFM pottery and an assemblage of Middle and Late Postclassic plainware in the western Valley of Mexico which he called the Tepeyac complex. This suggests that although TFM pottery may have been adapted to the needs of specialized saltmaking in the context of a regional market system, it nonetheless belonged to a long-established potterymaking tradition. In 1995, Jeffrey Bonevich (1996) mapped the ancient saltmaking remains south of Tonanitla, a low island in the southern part of Lake Xaltocan (Fig. 1.2). This particular area had fallen outside the borders of three earlier systematic survey projects in the 1970s, but reconnaissance in later years revealed numerous irregular mounds, heavily littered with TFM pottery, along the former lakeshore zone between Tonanitla and Ecatepec. Bonevich's map (Fig. 7.2) revealed the same pattern of numerous large "salt mounds" extending northward into Lake Xaltocan. This pattern was also noted by Sanders (1976) a few kilometers to the south around the northwestern shore of Lake Texcoco between Ecatepec and Tepeyac. Most of the features mapped by Bonevich have since been completely destroyed by massive field leveling done to extend irrigated alfalfa production-in fact, many ancient saltmaking features in this area were already fully devastated by 1995. These sad remnants now exist only as scattered masses of soil, rocks, and sherds bulldozed into huge piles bordering the alfalfa fields (Plate 7.2). These hulks of mangled and displaced archaeological debris measure up to 6 meters high, 100 meters long, and 8-10 meters thick at the base. A very high proportion of the pottery in these massi ve piles is TFM, although other Late Postclassic ceramic types are also present, similar

258

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 7.2. Bulldozed salt making debris near Tonanitla, Lake XaJtocan, August 1996.

Plate 7.3. Surface pottery at probable Early Postclassic saltmaking site near Tultepec, Lake Xaltocan, September 1973.

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259

to that revealed by the Xocotitlan excavations, suggesting a combination of saltmaking and residential functions. In recent excavations at Xaltocan, an island center in saline Lake XaltocanZumpango north of Lake Texcoco, Brumfiel (1996: 15-17, 28) reports that TFM ceramics comprise 11 % of her overall Late Postclassic (Aztec III) ceramic assemblage, and no more than 1% of the Middle Postclassic material. This is comparable to the 12.5% TFM that Gonzalez Rul (1988: 185) reports from Tlatelolco. No definitive saltmaking workshop areas have been unearthed so far at Xaltocan, and so it is still not clear whether this TFM pottery represents production, use, or market exchange of salt. A modest level of local saltmaking might have existed at Xaltocan to process fish, in order to participate more effectively in the regional market exchange, or to meet tributary demands imposed by the Tenochtitlan-dominated Triple Alliance.

Pre-Middle Postclassic Saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico There has been very little interest in the archaeology of pre-Middle Postclassic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico. I know of only four significant exceptions. One is Mayer-Oakes' (1959) stratigraphic excavation at EI Risco, on the north shore of Lake Texcoco (Fig. 1.2). This deep deposit showed prehispanic occupation extending from the Classic into the Late Postclassic period. TFM pottery began to appear in quantities only after the Early Postclassic levels, and its temporal distribution in the excavation was complementary over time with the distribution of unburnished plainware that Mayer-Oakes (1959:337) called Texcoco Brown. In other words, as the frequency of TFM pottery rapidly increased over time, Texcoco Brown rapidly declined. This distribution suggested that some forms of Texcoco Brown may have preceded TFM as specialized saltmaking pottery. Mayer-Oakes' suggestion was noted by other investigators (e.g., Sanders et al. 1979), but no new field studies were undertaken to follow up on his pioneering effort. During regional surveys in Lake Zumpango in 1973, we located several sites around the margins of Cerro Tultepec with unusually high densities of Early Postclassic (Late Toltec) plainware (Fig. 1.2; Plate 7.3). These high concentrations of large jars and basins are without parallel anywhere in the Valley of Mexico, except at Late Postclassic "saltmaking" sites littered with TFM pottery, and at the Terminal Formative site of EI Tepalcate in southeastern Lake Texcoco (see below). Like the latter sites, the ceramic assemblages of these Early Postclassic sites near Tultepec are very strongly dominated by one or two vessel forms (large, thick-walled jars or basins). I strongly suspect that these Early Postclassic sites near Tultepec represent saltmaking workshops, possibly closely linked with a regional economy dominated by Tula, the major Early Postclassic regional center situated some 40 kilometers to the northwest (Fig. 1.2). The Tultepec sites may represent an early stage of the type

260

The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 7.4. The El Tepalcate site ca. 1940. Facing north -northwest across main ite. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden . Photo: Ola Apenes.

Plate 7.5. Stone "heaps" at the El Tepalcale sile, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940. ©The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

of specialized saltmaking that expanded and intensified around Lake Texcoco in later centuries under Aztec domination and in association with TFM pottery. The pottery we found at the sites near Tultepec probably corresponds to Mayer-Oakes ' Texcoco Brown complex that appears to have been associated with Early PostcJassic saltmaking at EI Risco. As far as I know, there are no such Early PostcJassic " altmaking" sites anywhere south of El Risco in the Valley of Mexico. Within the

The Archaeology of Traditional Saltmaking

261

Valley of Mexico during the Early Postclassic, this more specialized type of saltmaking appears to have been confined to the northwestern sector controlled by Tula. In 1962, Litvak (1964) excavated a mound near the far northeastern shore of Lake Texcoco, below the town of Tepexpan near the mouth of the Teotihuacan Valley (Fig. 1.2). The mound was roughly 100 m in overall diameter, and measured about 2 m high at its maximum elevation. The main occupation was Classic, with a secondary Late Postclassic overlay that apparently lacked any TFM pottery; there was also a very modest Early Postclassic occupation. Over 90% of the Classic pottery recovered from the excavations belonged to a single plainware pottery type: San Martin Monocromo Brunido. Although its function remains uncertain, this site is an excellent candidate for a Classic-period saltmaking site. Many years ago, Apenes (1939, 1943) and Noguera (1943) called attention to the remarkable archaeological site, referred to as "El Tepalcate," on the former lakebed near Chimalhuacan in southeastern Lake Texcoco (Fig. 1.2). Noguera tested the site and determined that it belonged to what we now call the Patlachique phase of the Terminal Formative period (occupied ca. 200 B.C.). In 1967 we included this site in the Texcoco Region survey (Site Tx-TF-46, Parsons 1971 :50-5 1). Such a large lakebed site is virtually unique in the Valley of Mexico for this time period. El Tepalcate covers some 19 hectares, and contains several mounded areas and a very heavy litter of rock and surface pottery (Plate 7.4). The overwhelming majority of this pottery consists of one or two forms of large jars or basins. In the early 1940s, when parts of the lake still contained water, Apenes (1943:32) described the site as follows: It consists of two parts: a long, narrow, grass-covered elevation ... which contains well-defined layers of sherds; and a wide belt sloping slightly from the elevation to the water edge, ... still partly flooded in the rainy season .... It is covered mainly by hundreds of peculiar round heaps of stones mixed with broken sherds and stone artifacts [Plates 7.5, 7.6]. In diameter, the heaps vary from 0.5-4 m. There are also rows of larger un worked stones forming straight lines across the field [Plate 7.7] .... In the center of the field are traces of some nearby rectangular structures.

In his excavations, Noguera (1943:43) found that plainwares accounted for over 97% of the total sherd count, and that the most abundant classes of plainware accounted for nearly 88% of the total plain ware sherds. He also determined (1943:33) that [b]eneath one alignment of stones a crudely made stone wall was found to extend downwards to a considerable depth, but in all other cases the stones [in the piles mentioned by Apenes] were found to be merely lying on the surface .... Sherds are abundant over the entire surface of the site and were found throughout the excavations, all of which were carried down to water level or to depths of 1.6-2.0 m below the surface ...

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 7.6. Close-up view of a stone "heap" at the EI Tepalcate site, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940. © The National Museum of Ethnography. Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

Plate 7.7. Wall-like alignment of stones at the El Tepalcate site, southeastern Lake Texcoco, ca. 1940. © The National Museum of Ethnography, Sweden. Photo: Ola Apenes.

The Archaeology of Traditional Saltmaking

263

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In 1967 I described the site as follows: Moderate to heavy concentrations of surface pottery and rock rubble over an area of about 19 hectares .... Apenes' "long, narrow grass-covered elevation" runs along the entire southern side of the site area, rising about 1.5 m above the level of the surrounding lake bed. Sherds are not common on its grassy upper surface, but several small pits penetrating to depths of up to 50 cm have brought some pottery to the surface. The lake bed south of this elevation contains only light concentrations of surface pottery and rock rubble, and shows no indications of structural remains. North of the grassy rise occupational debris is much heavier, and wall bases of several large rectangular stone-walled compounds and/or rooms of variable size can be distinctly seen [as seen in Fig. 7.3, these "rooms" measure up to 30 x 30 m] ... , in addition to the other features mentioned by Apenes. The function of architectural features is not at all clear. [Parsons 1971 :50-51]

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Plate 7.8. Area of obsidian concentration at edge of EI TepaJcate site.

Plate 7.9. Close-up of obsidian concentration at El TepaJcate site.

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Although I did not mention them in my 1971 monograph, the EI Tepa1cate site also contains several large areas, up to 20 m in diameter, with extremely high concentrations of obsidian debris (Plates 7.8, 7.9). Apenes (1939:65) also noted this same abundance of obsidian. Recent excavation by Gamez (1994, 1997) and Garcia and Gamez (1998) have provided additional information about the site's character. This lithic material may be functionally comparable to the high concentrations of obsidian blades noted at some saltmaking sites in the Sayula basin and the Tehuacan Valley (see below). A few years ago I began to suspect that the EI Tepa1cate site represents a very large Terminal Formative saltmaking workshop (Parsons 1996). Its lake bed location, high sherd density, peculiar stone-piles, and walled enclosure features-all make little sense for any other purpose. These assemblages of features are actually quite similar to Classic-period saltmaking sites around the shores of Lake Sayula, Jalisco (e.g., Liot 1995:17-19). The archaeological remains at EI Tepa1cate appear to represent two distinct functions: the residences of saltmakers on the elevated linear mound, and the remains of their workshops on the surrounding lower ground. I also suspect that the saltmaking here was done by solar evaporation, and that many of the large basins were evaporating vessels. Alternatively, the abundant surface pottery and stone piles might be the remains of large leaching vessels that once rested atop stone supports (compare Plate 5.5). Some of the large rectangular walled enclosures may have functioned to hold and concentrate brine, and some of the linear stone alignments may be the remains of canals that led water from one place to another, or of raised walkways that facilitated the movement of saltmakers over partially flooded areas. I will return in Chapter 8 to the larger implications of the EI Tepa1cate site. The salt made at this locality may have played a significant role in the relationships between the rapidly developing Terminal Formative centers of Cuicui1co and Teotihuad.n at a time of important sociopolitical change in the Valley of Mexico (Fig. 1.2). Settlement pattern surveys throughout the Valley of Mexico have revealed the presence of several dozen pre-Middle Postclassic sites around the shore of saline Lake Texcoco, and around the western and northern shores of Lake XaltocanZumpango (Blanton 1972; Parsons 1971; Sanders 1976; Sanders et al. 1979). These sites range in age from Middle Formative through Early Postclassic, and all are potential candidates for saltmaking localities. None of these sites has been excavated, or even revisited since the original surveys of several decades ago; many no longer exist because of modern urban and suburban expansion. Aside from EI Tepalcate, we have no idea about which, if any, of these lakeshore sites may have been concerned with saltmaking. They might well reflect the exploitation of other lacustrine resources. One of the biggest unknowns is how the large urban population of Classic Teotihuacan obtained salt. There are only a handful of known Classic-period sites from the saline lakeshores. These are small, and only the lakeshore mound near

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Tepexpan excavated by Litvak (1964) gives any clear indication of saltmaking potential. If El Tepalcate was, in fact, a large saltmaking workshop during the Terminal Formative, then there is far greater archaeological evidence for saltmaking during the Terminal Formative than there is for the subsequent Classic. Nevertheless, with an urban population of at least 100,000 inhabitants, Classic Teothuacan would probably have required a daily minimum of 200,000 grams (200 kg) of salt, just for dietary needs alone (see Chapter 1 for a discussion of the physiological needs for salt consumption). This would have amounted to 73,000 kg (73 metric tons) per year. Given nondietary uses for salt, something on the order of at least 100 metric tons per year would have been essential. This problem of the archaeological "invisibility" of saltmaking during some prehispanic periods appears in at least two other parts of Mesoamerica (the Sayula basin, Jalisco, and the northern Yucatan peninsula-see below). Summary and Conclusions The association between TFM pottery and later Postclassic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico seems clearly established. Although there is now convincing archaeological evidence that standard volumes of crystalline salt were packaged and redistributed in TFM containers, the roles of analogous containers in saltmaking prior to the Middle Postclassic remain unclear. By later Postclassic times there were "saltmaking sites" around the entire perimeter of the saline lakes, and there is some indication that the same type of saltmaking was underway under Tula's hegemony during Early Postclassic times in the northwestern Valley of Mexico. In the later Postclassic, these workshops are defined by the presence of irregular mounds, heavily littered with TFM pottery, situated in saline lakeshore zones. Earlier sites in the same zones, lacking such distinctive pottery, cannot yet be definitively associated with saltmaking. Although the Xocotitlan excavations in northwestern Lake Texcoco have provided excellent information about one Late Postclassic saltmaking workshop, several important questions remain. For example, there is still uncertainty about the degree to which solar evaporation and brine boiling may have been combined. There is still uncertainty about whether saltmaking was a year-round activity. There is still considerable uncertainty about how much of the archaeological remains we are accustomed to associate with "saltmaking" may actually have had more to do with producing large quantities of cheap, expendable TFM pottery. We have absolutely no idea whatsoever about how much, if any, "saltmaking" may have been dedicated to the production of dye mordants. There is still remarkably little understanding of pre-Middle Postclassic saltmaking. There are hints of this for the Terminal Formative and Early Postclassic periods, but these tantalizing possibilities still raise many more questions than they answer. For all other major periods-the Classic, the Epiclassic, and the Formative (Early, Middle,

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and Late)-there is virtually no information beyond the bare possibility than some of the several dozen known lakeshore sites dating to those periods may have been involved in saltmaking.

Other Parts of Mesoamerica Outside the Valley of Mexico, archaeological studies of prehispanic saltmaking in Mesoamerica have been undertaken primarily in six areas (Fig. 1.1): (1) the southern Toluca basin to the west of the Valley of Mexico (Castillo and Arana 1998; Quijada 1984); (2) the Tehuacan region of southern Puebla (Caste1l6n 1998; MacNeish et al. 1970,1972; Martinez and Caste1l6n 1995; Neely et al. 1997; Sisson 1973); (3) the Valley of Oaxaca (Drennan 1976; Hewitt et al. 1987; Neely et al. 1990; Peterson 1976; Peterson et al. 1989); (4) several localities on the Gulf, Caribbean, and Pacific coasts (Baudez 1973, Ceja 1998; Coe and Flannery 1967; MacKinnon and Kepecs 1989; McKillop 1995; Mock 1998; Nance 1992; Santley et al. 1988; Valdez and Mock 1991); (5) a handful of sites in inland Guatemala and Chiapas (Dillon et al. 1988; McVicker 1969); and (6) the Lake Sayula basin in lalisco (Liot 1995;Valdez and Liot 1994; Valdez et al. 1996; Weigand and G. de Weigand 1997). Although there are clear indications of Formative-period saltmaking in both coastal and inland settings (e.g., Ceja 1998:52-53; Coe and Flannery 1967:91; Drennan 1976; Pailles 1977; Santley et al. 1988), the most definitive remains date to the Classic and Postclassic-periods dominated by comparatively large, centralized polities (Fig. 1.3). Some saltmaking sites in Tehuacan are clearly posthispanic (Sisson 1973:9596).

Location and Appearance

0/ Saltmaking Sites

Not surprisingly, all archaeological sites identified and investigated as "saltmaking" sites are situated along coastal lagoons, or around the shores of inland saline lakes, or near salt springs-in the same places where traditional saltmaking has been carried out during the historic period. As in the Valley of Mexico, some archaeological sites are presumed to have been involved in saltmaking simply because they are situated in obvious saltmaking localities. The most definitive saltmaking sites are characterized by substantial mounds of irregular form (measuring up to 8 m high and 50 m across, but more typically 1-3 m high and 10-20 m across), heavily littered with surface pottery dominated by one or two pottery types. In the Tehuacan and Oaxaca areas, the surfaces of some mounds have large stone slabs that may represent the remains of stone-lined evaporation pans, brine-holding containers, or leaching tubs (MacNeish et al. 1972:425-27; Sisson 1973:88-90). Alternatively, Martinez and Caste1l6n (1995:67) have suggested that some of these masonry features may have been water deposits for large-scale pottery production.

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Most of these pottery-littered mounds are believed to represent the remnants of discarded leached soil: excavation typically reveals that they contain substantial ash, but no remnants of domestic residential occupation (e.g., Nance 1992). Sometimes saltmaking workshops appear to be defined by clusters of several dozen mounds grouped around open areas (Sisson 1973: 19). There are also a smaller number of saltmaking sites where such mounds are absent (e.g., Baudez 1973; Santley et al. 1988). Moundless sites, or moundless sectors of mounded sites, are typically inferred to have been associated with saltmaking when they occur near salt sources and are heavily littered with surface pottery and ash (Peterson 1976:81-85,95-96). In the Sayula basin, Jalisco, many saltmaking sites also have a well-developed lithic industry, with several different categories of obsidian and basalt tools. Liot (1995: 17, 19) suggests that the large numbers of manos and metates (grinding tools usually associated with domestic food preparation) found at some Sayula saltmaking sites may have been directly related to salt production (e.g., grinding coarse crystals to make finer salt). Obsidian blades are so numerous and consistently present at saltmaking sites in the Tehuacan region, that Sisson (1973:23) suggests they may have been functionally linked to some part of the saltmaking process in that area. These large numbers of obsidian blades recall similar concentrations of obsidian at the Terminal Formative EI Tepalcate site in the Valley of Mexico (see above). Most investigators conclude that most prehispanic saltmaking in Mesoamerica took place during the dry season, and that most saltmaking sites were occupied seasonally or on a temporary basis. However, in most cases this inference has not been fully tested by empirical archaeological evidence. Archaeological research may not always have detected the physically subtle sites associated with some types of saltmaking-for instance, the small camps proposed for Formative Yucatan (Andrews 1983: 109) and the Late Postclassic Sayula basin (Valdez and Liot 1996: 182).

Non-Movable Ceramic and Masonry Containers Several types of large, very heavy containers appear to have functioned to store or evaporate brine, or as leaching devices. From a salt-spring site in Oaxaca, Drennan (1976:257) reports stone-lined rectangular pits, approximately 2 x 3 m in area, that apparently functioned to hold brine from the adjacent spring. Similar rectangular or circular masonry features are noted for many saltmaking sites in the Tehuacan area (Neely et al. 1997:7) and around Lake Sayula, Jalisco (Liot 1995:23; Valdez et al. 1996:180-81). The best-dated features of this type in Tehuacan and Oaxaca are Postclassic and Colonial; in the Sayula basin they are Classic. In some cases, the interior walls of these features are covered with thick laminated calcium carbonate deposits, as would be expected for brine with high carbonate concentrations. An important function of the rectangular pits may have been to allow the less soluble calcium carbonate to precipitate out, while the more soluble NaCI remained

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in solution. Some Middle Formative sherds from the Oaxacan site studied by Drennan contain thin coatings of calcium carbonate, perhaps a sign that they are from vessels that functioned to hold spring-brine for saltmaking. Carbonate-charged spring waters are common throughout the Valley of Oaxaca, and several such sources may have been associated with prehispanic saltmaking (Hewitt et al. 1987; Peterson 1976:62,72; cf. Neely et al. 1990). In the Sayula basin, archaeologists have defined large subsurface containers that appear to have functioned for brine storage (e.g., Liot 1995:20-22; Valdez et al. 1996: 181). These containers might best be termed ceramic-lined pits, rather than jars, since it appears unlikely that they were ever intended to be moved or used above ground. The Sayula features measure 20-100 cm in diameter and up to about 50 cm deep. In the late nineteenth century, Lumholtz (1902:319) described a cluster of 40 of these features on the Sayula lakeshore, "sunk in rows with some regularity, about 15 inches [38 cm] apart." Quijada (1984: 189-90) has described what may be functionally equivalent brine-storage pits, constructed of stone blocks thickly lined with lime plaster, near the Tonatico salt springs in the western State of Mexico. The Tonatico containers are up to 1.6 m deep and 1.4 m in maximum diameter.

Ceramic Assemblages Although it is well known that saltmaking sites have heavy concentrations of pottery, very little attention has been paid to whether some of this pottery might have been manufactured at or near the saltmaking workshops. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between pottery manufacture and pottery use at archaeological saltmaking sites. Noting the presence of several "kilns" at the EI Salado saltmaking site in the Gulf Coast Tuxtlas range, Santley et al. (1988:4) conclude that "most of the pottery discarded ... was ... probably made on-site." Equally important, and equally difficult for the archaeologist, is the ability to recognize specific function in ceramic assemblages at "saltmaking" sites. For example, it may not be easy to distinguish specialized pottery, dedicated exclusively (or primarily) to saltmaking, from more generalized pottery that might also have served other domestic or artisanal functions. At times this task is more difficult than others, but it is rarely straightforward (e.g., Liot 1995:26). Fabric-Marked Pottery. In all of Mesoamerica, this pottery is reported only from the Valley of Mexico and the Tehuacan region (Castellon 1998: 117-18; MacN eish et al. 1970: 163, 1972:425; Martinez and Castellon 1995:67; Sisson 1973:89). Unlike the Valley of Mexico, where TFM pottery dates exclusively to the Middle and Late Postclassic, fabric-marked pottery in the Tehuacan region appears in the Early Classic period and persists for the rest of the prehispanic sequence (and may even extend into the Colonial period). Tehuacan fabric-marked pottery also has finer paste and appears to be less abundant at saltmaking sites than fabric-marked pottery in the

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Figure 7.4. Use of cylinders, spacers, and sockets in brine boiling (adapted from McKillop 1995:225).

Valley of Mexico. This pottery's primary function in both regions appears to have been for drying and packaging salt (Sisson 1973:93). The significance of the temporal and spatial distribution of fabric-marked pottery remains unclear. Brine Boiling. Many studies of coastal saltmaking in Mesoamerica outside northern Yucatan report good evidence for brine boiling, including hearths and associated boiling vessels. Along the Belize coast (Andrews 1998: 10-13; MacKinnon and Kepecs 1989:525; McKiIIop 1995:221; Mock 1998:35-37), this evidence includes a distinctive Classic-period complex of solid ceramic cylinders, "spacers," and "sockets" that appear to have supported and steadied the closely spaced boiling vessels so that they were elevated some 10-15 cm above direct contact with the underlying fire (Fig. 7.4). Ceramic cylinders (sometimes termed "stilts") are also associated with Late Formative saltmaking on the Guatemalan Pacific coast (Coe and Flannery 1967 :91), and with Classic and Postclassic saltmaking in the highland Tehuacan region, where they have a modal height of 14-18 cm and average diameter of2.5 cm (Castellon 1998: 120; Sisson 1973:98). The use of such cylinders would have permitted brine boiling with much less heat stress on the brine containers than would result from direct contact with the fire. Nance (1992:43) suggests that a similar ("stilt") function may have been more expediently served by thick rim sherds at a Terminal Formative/Proto-Classic site he excavated on the Guatemala coast. The only highland Mesoamerican setting where such a cylinder-spacer-socket artifact complex is known is from Classic and Postclassic saltmaking sites in Tehuacan. In some coastal sites, on the other hand, brine appears to have been boiled in ceramic bowls placed directly onto hearths where they were subjected to high heat (Baudez 1973:511; Ceja 1998:51). One of the most definitive archaeological studies of ancient saltmaking pottery is that of Dillon et al. (1988:44-47) for the Cerro de los Nueve Cerros site, an inland

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salt-spring locality in north-central Guatemala with some 9 vertical meters of saltmaking refuse extending from Terminal Formative through Terminal Classic times (i.e., most of the first millennium A.D.). Much of this debris may have built up over no more than three or four centuries (Dillon et al. 1988:55-56). Three categories of pottery seem to be very specifically associated with specialized Classic-period saltmaking at this locality: (1) Cotebal Red (n = 1290 sherds), shallow bowls with thick, slightly concave bases, averaging 40-50 cm in diameter and with thin walls 68 cm high; (2) Atzam Red (n = l71 sherds, plus 5 complete vessels), very large "vats," with rim diameters of 1.6-2.6 m and measuring 50-80 cm deep; and (3) Tzaquib Unslipped (n = 940 sherds), tall, relatively narrow cylinders with rounded bottoms and roughly scraped surfaces, averaging 20-35 cm high and 8-15 cm in rim diameter. Precise vessel function(s) remain tentative, but several good inferences emerge. The large vats (Atzam Red), apparently unique in the Maya lowlands, probably functioned to store brine carried into the workshop from nearby springs. There is little indication of scorching or heat stress, although some form of stone boiling may have been used to evaporate brine in these vessels during the rainy season. Such low-heat evaporation would have subjected the vessels to little significant heat stress. The thick-bottomed shallow bowls (Cotebal Red) appear to have functioned as molds used for boiling brine directly on a stone-lined hearth (the basal sections are discolored by heat stress), and deliberately broken to remove the salt cake: The majority of sherds [of Cotebal Red] are in the form of a basal "pie slice," with very little of the wall left; this breakage pattern is so consistent as to be suggestive of intentional breakage by impact at the center of each vessel's base, probably by dropping on a rock or stump. [Dillon et al. 1988:47]

The poorly made, fire-clouded cylindrical vessels (Tzaquib Un slipped) also seemed to have functioned as molds; the thin-walled vessels were deliberately broken, after high-heat brine boiling, to retrieve the hard salt "loaf." Since Tzaquib Unslipped and Cotebal Red vessels appear to be contemporary, the Classic saltmakers at Cerro de los Nueve Cerros were apparently making salt in two distinctive forms and sizesperhaps two different grades of salt (e.g., fine-grained in the smaller Tzaquib Unslipped cylinders, and coarser grained in the larger Cotebal Red bowls). At the Terminal Formative Guzman mound site on the Guatemala Pacific coast, Nance (1992:31-35) associates brine boiling with large, sloppily made basins (Porvenir Coarse), averaging 24-35 cm in rim diameter (no vessel height noted). Over time these vessels appear to have had larger diameters-perhaps indicating greater boiling efficiency. These vessels are similar to the abundant, roughly finished bowls found by Baudez (1973:511) in association with large, rectangular pithearths at Postclassic saltmaking sites on the Honduras coast farther south. Nance (1992:44) concludes that at these coastal saltmaking sites "brine was boiled in pots aligned in shallow trenches" and that these vessels functioned as molds broken after a single use to retrieve the hardened salt within. The "biscuit ware" defined by

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McVicker (1969:32) for the Late Classic in interior Chiapas may be another category of expendable brine-boiling pottery. Neely et al. (1997: 13; also Sisson 1973:23) identify shallow brine-boiling vessels, "comal-like in appearance," (comals are flat, platelike vessels) that are clearly associated with hearths in one excavated site near Tehuacan: The hearth lay centrally in a pile of what appears to be coarse, salt-encrusted soil, broken ceramics, and small boulder-size rocks that were fire altered. The ceramics were nearly all utilitarian types, and included fragments from large comalshaped pans or trays, ceramic stilts [cylinders], and sherds of varying shapes with loosely woven fabric impressions on the exterior surfaces .... Our reconstruction of the activity area is ... a rather small hearth ... in an elongated trench-like pit, on either side of which were situated the ceramic stilts set vertically into the ground and the rocks. The [ceramic] vessels, including the large comal-like pans, were supported above the hearth by the ceramic stilts and perhaps the rocks.

Although most investigators see broken salt molds as the source of much of the abundant ceramic debris characteristic of saltmaking sites, several note the importance of small stone or abraded sherd scrapers that may have been used to detach salt from the walls of boiling vessels that were reused more than once (e.g., Peterson 1976:84-85). Peterson (1976: 106) suggests that such vessels in Postclassic Oaxaca were utilitarian, low-necked, flaring jars with wide mouths and maximal body diameters of 38-82 cm, and a modal volume of 22 liters. Peterson (1976:82) emphasizes that vessels subjected to high heat stress will inevitably eventually break through the stress of repeated contraction as they cool after each boiling episode. Solar Evaporation. The best archaeological evidence for prehispanic solar evaporation comes from the Tehuacan region. In many cases, it appears that solar evaporation and brine boiling were combined in this area. Many Tehuacan saltmaking sites contain shallow rectangular masonry enclosures ("pans"), constructed of flat stones, with plastered interior surfaces, that measure between 2 x 3 m and 6 x 8 m in area (Martinez and Castellon 1975:71). These spring-fed enclosures are often found on terraced hillslopes, usually with a southern exposure to maximize direct sunlight. Other evaporating enclosures occur on low-lying ground, in open spaces surrounded by mounds of leached soil. These evaporation systems are "complex, involving several augmentations of water, the gathering of salts in several stages" (Neely et al. 1997:5). As noted above, the evaporation enclosures often occur in proximity to brine-boiling hearths and pottery in both Classic and Postclassic occupations. Classic-period saltmaking sites around the shores of Lake Sayula, Jalisco, are characterized by an abundance of large ceramic basins, sometimes referred to as "Sayula salt pans" (Liot 1995: 19-21; Valdez et al. 1996: 179). These vessels are typically about 40 cm in diameter and approximately 15-20 cm deep. None show signs of heat stress, and they are believed to be associated with storing and solar-evaporating brine. The Sayula salt pans cease to be used after the Epiclassic, and are replaced

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during the later Postclassic by larger, shallower pans, about 50 cm in diameter and 7 cm deep, that probably also functioned for the solar evaporation of brine.

Changes in Saltmaking over Time In a few areas, archaeological investigations have been sufficiently extensive and systematic to permit tentative reconstructions of long-term changes in the technology and organization of prehispanic saltmaking. The Valley a/Oaxaca. Peterson (1976:101-3) distinguishes two general stages of saltmaking. The first stage, most typical of the Late ClassiciEpiclassic period (ca. 600-900 A.D., and probably earlier) appears to have been based on brine boiling without leaching of salty soil. Workshops lack associated piles of leached earth, and there are no indications of large hearths with hot fires. Instead, brine was probably brought directly from the source (a spring or well) to nearby small hearths to be boiled in relatively large jars. The second stage, after ca. A.D. 900 (and especially after ca. 1300), is defined on the basis of archaeological evidence indicating larger, hotter ovens, a shift to leaching salty earth in large masonry pans (and a consequent accumulation of large earth piles around the workshop margins), and the predominance of ceramic molds broken after each use to extract the hard salt. The Tehuacan Area. Reviewing the results of fieldwork during the 1960s and 1970s, Neely et al. (1997:9-11) see good evidence for a substantial increase in the scale and complexity of salt production between Early Classic and Early Colonial times. There was a major increase in saltmaking during the mid-sixteenth century in the face of increasing posthispanic demand for salt in refining silver ore at the Pachuca mines. Sisson (1973:94) even suggests that much of the large-scale leaching of salty soil in Tehuacan may actually be posthispanic. Archaeological studies in Tehuacan show that from Classic to Postclassic times there were more saltmaking sites, and more large multimound complexes grouped around salt evaporation pans. Unlike Oaxaca, the Sayula basin, and the Valley of Mexico, there appear to be no major technological changes in Tehuacan saltmaking over this long period: the entire Classic-to-Early Colonial sequence is characterized by earth leaching, solar evaporation and brine boiling, the use of fabric-marked pottery, and a boiling complex of ceramic cylinders, spacers, and sockets. The Sayula Basin, Jalisco. Investigators have noted major differences in saltmaking technology and settlement pattern between the ClassiciEpiclassic (Sayula phase) and the later Postclassic (Amacueca phase) (Liot 1995; Valdez and Liot 1994; Valdez et al. 1996). The archaeological evidence for Classic-period saltmaking is abundant: there are many lakeshore sites that can be associated with dry-season saltmaking, employing both solar evaporation and brine boiling techniques on the desiccated salt flats. These Classic sites are typically small mounds heavily littered with distinctive pottery, including large, shallow basins ("Sayula salt pans," probably used for the solar evaporation of brine); piles of stones and sherds; circular masonry pits or tanks

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for brine storage and solar evaporation; and possible ovens formed of ceramic-lined cylindrical pits. In some parts of the Sayula lakeshore these sites stretch continuously for several kilometers, much as do Late Postclassic saltmaking sites along the northwestern shore of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. Classic-period saltmaking in the Sayula basin took place both in large, permanent, multifunction lakeshore settlements, and in isolated small, seasonally occupied workshops or special-purpose locations (e.g., brine storage). Conversely, the archaeological evidence of Postclassic saltmaking around Lake Sayula is much less obvious. There are few lakeshore sites, and none of the distinctive assemblages of pottery, pits, and ovens that characterize the earlier ClassicEpiclassic. The most definitive Postclassic saltmaking ceramic vessels are large shallow pans with burnished interiors, flat bottoms and straight walls. These vessels average 50 cm in diameter and 7 cm deep, and commonly have thin white deposits on their interior walls. Since they show no signs of heat stress, they were probably used in some type of solar evaporation. Surprisingly, there is apparently no clear archaeological evidence of the numerous saltmaking activities, including brine boiling, that are described for this same area in the late sixteenth century (e.g., Ciudad Real 1976 [1588]:151) (see Chapter 4). Valdez et al. (1996: 182) suggest that "[d]uring the Postclassic ... diagnostic ceramic evidence [of saltmaking around the Sayula lakeshore] is lacking because people moved to the upper terraces and came down sporadically during the dry season" to occupy small, temporary saltmaking camps that have remained unnoticed by archaeologists. They see this as reflecting a shift from an "industrial" level of salt production in the Classic to a household level in the Postclassic. It is unclear whether this shift may have been caused by sociopolitical or environmental factors. This long-term transformation in the Sayula basin appears to be precisely the opposite of how saltmaking changed over this same time period in the Valley of Mexico, the Tehuacan region, and the Valley of Oaxaca, but seemingly quite similar to what occurred in northern Yucatan (see below). El Salado, Veracruz. The El Salado site is a deep deposit, near a major salt spring, with two major occupations: Middle Formative and Late Classic. There appears to be basic technological continuity over this long time period: the saltmaking pottery in both chronological components is characterized by (1) large, deep basins, (2) large shallow basins or trays, and (3) globular jars (both neckless and necked). The difference over time appears to be mainly one of scale: the Late Classic salt production was on such a large scale that it produced an archaeological deposit in which "sherds are literally stacked one atop the other ... over an area of 3.5 hectares ... and 1.5-2 m deep" (Santley et al. 1988:13). Northern Yucatan. Andrews (1983:31-33) has observed the major increase in the scale and organizational complexity of prehispanic saltmaking along the northern Yucatecan coast. A very modest Formative industry was succeeded in Classic times by more numerous and much larger workshops, many of which continued to be used

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until the end of the first millennium A.D. All these workshops appear to have depended on solar evaporation techniques; there is little or no archaeological evidence for brine boiling. Andrews (1983: 109) suggests that archaeological traces of pre-Late Formative saltmaking along the Yucatecan coast may always prove elusive: Early saltmaking in Yucatan was probably a simple process, consisting merely of collecting the salt that formed naturally on the shores of dry lagoons and estuary coves. Such activities are not visible in the archaeological record .... In fact, our earliest evidence of saltmaking is not based on actual salt works, but on the fact that Late Formative campsites and hamlets are located amid ideal salt making areas.

Andrews also suggests that the shell "celts" commonly reported from Late Formative coastal sites may been scrapers for detaching crystalline salt from the surfaces of evaporation vessels. The dramatic transformations of Postclassic Mayan society appear to be reflected in the consolidation of political control over major coastal saltmaking sites (salinas) by emerging Early Postclassic centers in northern Yucatan. After about A.D. 1200, however, there was a major decline (although not an abandonment) of coastal saltmaking as large centers like Chichen Itza collapsed. Andrews (1983:34) suggests that [t]he near absence of Late Postclassic [saltmaking] remains on the northwest coast [of Yucatan] is puzzling, particularly in view of the [historically documented sixteenth-century] operation of the salinas. A partial explanation may be that of a "commuter" pattern. Sixteenth century records refer to many salinas as belonging to neighboring towns in the interior.... Thus, during the Late Postclassic the salinas appear to have been exploited by itinerant seasonal workers who resided in the interior and came out to the coast on a daily or weekly basis. Future surveys will most likely encounter the campsites and middens that these workers left behind.

Andrews' suggestion is similar to what may have happened in the Sayula basin during the Postclassic (see above). It may also correspond to what occurred in the Valley of Mexico during the Classic period, when there are few good candidates for possible saltmaking workshops around the shores of Lake Texcoco. In Yucatan, the changing scale and complexity of coastal saltmaking appears to reflect long-term sociopolitical changes in that part of Mesoamerica. There are striking archaeological differences between Classic and Postclassic coastal saltmaking technology in northern Yucatan, on the one hand, and the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Quintana Roo, Belize, and Guatemala, on the other. In northern Yucatan there is virtually no evidence of brine boiling: heat-stressed boiling vessels are absent, as is the distinctive cylinder-spacer-socket complex. Both boiling vessels and the cylinder-spacer-socket complex are common in coastal Quintana Roo, Belize, and Guatemala (e.g., MacKinnon and Kepecs 1989; McKillop 1995; Moch 1998), probably as far back as Late Formative times (Coe and Flanncry

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1967:91). Why should these two coastal zones, which shared a common Mayan cultural heritage, have such different prehispanic saltmaking technologies? Is it simply because northern Yucatan is environmentally better suited for solar evaporation by virtue of its lower humidity, lower rainfall, greater incidence of sunny days, and cleaner, more vegetation-free lagoonal brine? I will return in Chapter 8 to the important question of causation for technological variability. One important point is Quijada's (1984:314) suggestion that a shift toward more brine boiling in the Tonatico area (south of Toluca in the western State of Mexico) may have been caused by the imposition of tributary demands fodine-grained salt by the Aztec state. Kondo (1975:63) develops a similar hypothesis to account for the increasing salt production in Japan during the mid-first millennium A.D. Summary and Conclusions Archaeological research over the past 35 years has examined several aspects of prehispanic saltmaking at all three major types of salt-producing sources (coastal lagoons, inland salt springs, and inland saline lakes) in Mesoamerica. Good evidence has accumulated for solar evaporation, brine boiling, and for molding, drying, and packaging crystalline salt. In several cases there is a good understanding of the types of pottery that were most closely linked to different parts of the production process; in a few cases, masonry features (e.g., basins, pans, and canals) can also be associated with brine storage and solar evaporation. A few examples of terraced salt "gardens" have been recognized. Many studies have used ethnographic analogy to help interpret archaeological remains. Despite these important advances, many of the uncertainties I posed earlier for prehispanic saltmaking in, the Valley of Mexico also pertain to Mesoamerica as a whole. Even for the best-studied archaeological sites, uncertainties remain in terms of the salt production process itself. Reasonable alternative hypotheses have been developed for most of the masonry, ceramic, and lithic materials that appear in "saltmaking" sites. Nevertheless, it is much easier to make general associations between saltmaking and various archaeological features or artifacts than it is to assign specific functions to these material remains. Much less well understood is what might be termed the infrastructure of saltmaking: the salt "gardens," evaporation pans, brine canals, the manufacture of expendable pottery containers, and the differences between dry-season and rainy-season saltmaking. There is good reason to suspect that much prehispanic saltmaking remains largely invisible; or, that it is so subtle that archaeologists have thus far overlooked much of it. There are only two characteristics that permit archaeologists to make clear associations between physical remains and ancient saltmaking: (1) a site's location near an obvious salt source; (2) the presence of irregular mounds heavily littered with one or two types of pottery, much of which is of low quality and highly expendable. Where one or both of these characteristics is absent, saltmaking is potentially invis-

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ible, as archaeologists working on some periods in northern Yucatan, in the Sayula basin, and in the Valley of Mexico have suspected. Conversely, it is still not possible to clearly separate salt production from the production of large quantities of expendable pottery that is directly associated with saltmaking; it is all too easy to confuse the archaeological remnants of both activities. It has sometimes even proved difficult to distinguish between the archaeological remains of saltmaking facilities and agricultural facilities-for example, hillside terraces near saline springs in the Valley of Oaxaca. Although ethnographic analogy has been very useful to them, archaeologists working in Mesoamerica need to go beyond the limitations of the most obvious and most available ethnographic sources in their efforts to model prehispanic saltmaking. Archaeologists may also need to develop new field-detection methods in order to recognize the material remains of some types of ancient saltmaking localities. It will also be necessary to make a clearer separation between late prehispanic and early Colonial-period saltmaking, both in the archaeological and the ethnohistorical sources. The powerful impact of silver-ore refining and gunpowder manufacture transformed the scale and intensity of saltmaking throughout New Spain within just a few years of initial contact. An excellent beginning has been made in considering the socioeconomic and sociopolitical implications of prehispanic saltmaking. This, of course, is what anthropological archaeologists mainly seek to infer in their investigations. Issues of territoriality, tribute, and exchange have all been raised. Nevertheless, most of these promising and suggestive ideas remain tentative and imprecisely modeled. One particular puzzle, for example, is why fabric-marked pottery was associated with saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico and the nearby Tehuacan region, but apparently nowhere else in Mesoamerica. Despite these problems, one major generalization seems clear: in some regions the scale, intensity, and technology of prehispanic saltmaking changed radically over time. Two examples that are most apparent are: (1) before and after the EarJy/Middle Postclassic in the Valley of Mexico; and (2) before and after the ClassiciEpiclassic in the Maya region. In both these examples we are dealing with core regions of major new polities (the Late Postclassic Aztec state and the ClassiciEpiclassic Lowland Maya states). Suggestions of major changes in saltmaking over time can also be detected in other parts of Mesoamerica. A clearer definition of what these changes involved technologically and organizationally should eventually lead to a much better understanding of the dynamics of both state development and decline.

North America Modern archaeological studies of indigenous saltmaking in North America are concentrated at sites near large salt springs in the humid southeastern U.S. (e.g.,

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Brown 1980; Early 1993; Keslin 1964; Muller 1984). Earlier investigations also focused on that same region (e.g., Bushnell 1914; Dellenbach 1898; Sellers 1877). Virtually all the known archaeological saltmaking sites are post-A.D. 1000 in age and associated with the Mississippian culture. Mississippian saltmaking sites are characterized by large, thick deposits of ceramic "salt pans," hearths with abundant charcoal, a great deal of ash, substantial quantities of fire-cracked rock (that may have functioned for stone boiling), and sometimes quantities of mussel shell. In some cases, salt-pan sherds comprise over two-thirds of a site's overall ceramic assemblages (Keslin 1964:75-78). A distinctive ceramic funnel-like vessel (the "Wickliffe form" [Brown 1980:37-38]) may have functioned in some type of earth-leaching operation. Most of these sites appear to represent the remains of seasonal (summer) saltmaking activities, not domestic residential occupation (Muller 1984:505). Bushnell (1914:646) described the unusually well-preserved contents of one such site in Missouri. At the base of the deposit was a mass of broken pottery nearly 18 inches [40 cm] in thickness. The fragments were, for the most part, in a horizontal position, and rested one upon another ... as to form practically a solid stratum. Above this was an accumulation of ashes, charcoal, and a few animal bones .... Many fire beds [hearths], masses of ashes, and accumulations of broken pottery appear at different levels along the sides of the [stream] channel.

Brown (1980: 1-2) distinguishes three main successive stages of salt production in the southeastern U.S.: (1) an earlier stage in which brine was evaporated, probably by stone boiling, in large ceramic "salt pans" with fabric-impressed exterior walls and smoothed interior surfaces; (2) a middle stage in which salt pans lacking fabric impressions continued to be used to evaporate brine by stone boiling; and (3) a later stage in which salt pans ceased to be used, their function being replaced by brine boiling in "medium-sized" bowls placed directly over hearth fires. The third stage was a radical departure from earlier practices, and characterized saltmaking in the region at the time of initial European contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Brown (1980:77 -79) also notes an unusual Late Mississippian saltmaking assemblage at Avery Island, Louisiana, where there is evidence for the use of ceramic cylinders ("stilts") to support brine-boiling vessels in a hearth. The use of such "stilts" may have been more widespread than currently recognized, owing to the poor preservation of these poorly fired "briquetage" artifacts (Brown 1980:86). Brown suggests that crystallized salt may have been scraped from the interior surfaces of the boiling bowls and packed into small miniature vessels (shaped like truncated cones) for transport in exchange networks. The volume of these cones is about that of a tennis ball (Early 1993: 11). The causes of these technological changes, and the nature of pre-Mississippian saltmaking in the southeastern U.S., remain unclear. Variations in sociopolitical organization, demography, and exchange patterns were undoubtedly involved. Brown

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(1980:59) emphasizes that the apparent decline in saltmaking in late Mississippian times may be less a matter of lower salt production and use, and more related to changing technology and different, more subtle material remains-recalling suggestions already noted for parts of Mesoamerica. The forms and production of the Mississippian salt-pan vessels have become better understood over the past 20 years. Brown (1980:20-22) distinguishes two different basin forms of this poorly fired pottery. The first "has a flat or rounded base and is adorned with textile impressions on the exterior and sometimes on the interior surface." The second "has a smooth or merely roughened exterior surface ... and ... rounded bases, although flat-bottomed smooth-faced pans have also been observed. The two types are often found at the same sites." Rim diameters are typically 50-80 cm, with an overall range between 28 and 152 cm; average vessel height is 20-31 cm, with an overall range of 15-48 cm. The overall volume capacity of individual salt pans ranges between 45 and 420 liters. These are thick-walled vessels, many with notably thickened rims, "probably to facilitate lifting the vessel." There is some indication that the pans were placed for use within shallow depressions scooped out of the ground surface (Brown 1980:28). In some cases, the association of heat-stressed stones suggests stone boiling. However, the sporadic occurrence of ashes and charcoal beneath salt pans indicates occasional boiling (Brown 1980:28). Some hearths associated with salt pans are quite large, and brine boiling over fires may have been relatively more important in some localities than others (Keslin 1964:33-34). Muller (1984:492) and Keslin (1964:33-34) emphasize that the large, unwieldy salt pans were almost certainly manufactured at the saltmaking workshops, and not made and brought in from elsewhere. This would have required a great deal of heating and firing in connection with pottery production. This implies that many of the hearths, and much of the ash and charcoal found at saltmaking sites here, and in other parts of the world, may reflect the production of saltmaking pottery rather than (or, in addition to) saltmaking itself. Recognizing the high fuel consumption of Mississippian saltmaking, Early (1993:228) calls attention to the potential problem of local deforestation in salt spring areas. Another archaeological problem derives from the fragility of salt pans. Early (1993:99), for example, notes that the poorly made vessels must have deteriorated quickly with use, often becoming increasingly broken up as they were discarded and trampled on in the workshop area. Many salt pans undoubtedly ended up in the archaeological record as "crumbly rounded masses," often difficult for archaeologists to recognize as former ceramic vessels. The occasional deposits in which saltpans remain relatively intact (such as Bushnell's description above) are unusual. This consideration recalls archaeological problems with defining the vessel forms offragile fabric-impressed pottery in the Valley of Mexico. Fabric-impressed pottery was for the most part used relatively early in Mississippian saltmaking, and these fabric-impressed salt pans were replaced over time by

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smooth-sided vessels. This is precisely the reverse of the sequence in the Valley of Mexico, where fabric-impressed pottery appears late. It also differs from the situation in the Tehuacan region, Mexico, where fabric-impressed pottery persists in saltmaking over a l300-year sequence. These differences may relate to the different functions of fabric-impressed pottery in southeastern North America vs. the central Mexican highlands. In Chapter 5 I noted that Mexican fabric-impressed pottery seems to have been associated with the final drying and packaging of salt. This is quite different from the Mississippian sites where much larger salt pans were apparently used for stoneboiling evaporation. There is still little evidence for the manufacture of Mexican fabric-marked pottery. It is now commonly believed that the Mississippian salt pans were molded in fabric-lined pits or baskets (or perhaps using wooden or clay molds), where the coarse textile that covered the mold-pit surface would have made it possible to lift the large, unfired vessel from its mold (Brown 1980:30-31; Bushnell 1914:664-65; Dedenbach 1898:674; Holmes 1885:72; Sellers 1877:578). The fabric lining may have been dispensed with once the process of smoothing and slipping of the pan surfaces permitted the vessel to be more easily detached from its mold without such a support.

South America Two of the three principal archaeological studies known to me are in highland Colombia: Cardale's (1975, 1976, 1981) work at the Zipaquira salt spring, and Bruhns' (1976) at the Los Quingos salt-spring locality. Morales (1977) has studied the archaeological deposits at the large San Bias salt spring in highland Peru. At the Zipaquira locality, saltmaking extends back some 2000 years, and deposits have built up to depths exceeding 3 meters. These deposits are made up of an apparently unbroken sequence of living floors alternating with thick layers of broken salt pots .... The living floors have domestic pottery, animal bones ... , and other household items. The sherds from the salt pots form layers which vary from a few cms to nearly a meter thick, and are so closely packed there is almost no earth between, though charcoal is abundant. [Cardale 1975:84]

Two vessel forms make up the great majority of the Zipaquira pottery: (1) bellshaped vessels, averaging 45 cm in rim diameter, with a maximum depth of approximately 25 cm; and (2) shallow bowls, typically about 40 cm in rim diameter and lO15 cm deep. The second category has considerable size variation. Both vessel types are poorly made, unevenly fired, lacking exterior smoothing, but with smooth interior surfaces, and usually with fire-blackened exteriors. Cardale (1981: 111) believes these were "disposable" vessels, used to boil brine and discarded after a single use to produce cakes of hard salt. Smoothing the vessel interiors apparently functioned to

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prevent the brine from seeping into the vessel walls, where it would have ruptured the walls as the moisture expanded during heating. Over time there was a tendency for the vessels to become larger, coarser, thicker walled, and subjected to higher heat, but there appears to have been little significant technological or organizational change since the first century A.D. Prior to that time, saltmaking was apparently carried out at a small scale, with the boiling vessels exposed to lower heat. Cardale (1981:151-52) suggests that the size variation she observes in the shallow bowl category at Zipaquira related to the need to achieve more efficient boiling by filling the empty spaces between larger circular vessels grouped tightly atop the heat source (apparently some sort of stove): the smaller vessels were simply placed in the gaps between the larger bowls. The numerous remains of fire-cracked rock throughout the excavated strata may represent stones used as "stilts" to support the boiling vessels while being heated-functionally equivalent to the Mesoamerican cylinder-spacer-socket complex.

Europe Investigations of ancient saltmaking in Europe have been preoccupied with the study of "briquetage" (e.g., Hopkinson 1975; Nenquin 1961; Riehm 1961). This term refers to a varied and diverse group of highly specialized ceramic artifacts that were associated with handling brine and crystalline salt. Although their precise functions often remain uncertain, many of the artifacts appear to have been linked to storing, boiling, or heating brine, and to drying, packaging and redistributing crystalline salt. Experiments have indicated that briquetage vessels used in hearths or ovens for drying and molding salt would probably have been used at relatively low temperatures in the range of 60-70T (Klein mann 1975:46). Some bowls appear to be deliberately made with small holes in the side walls, through which liquid from the damp salt within could drain (e.g., Nenquin 1961:125; Riehm 1961:185). Since briquetage pottery is never found with sooty walls or encrusted food remnants, it probably had no domestic cooking or food-preparation functions (Morris 1985:37073). 10klowski's (1975:86) chemical analyses revealed that briquetage vessels from Polish saltmaking sites have a consistently higher NaCI content than non-briquetage (domestic cooking pottery) vessels from the same sites-supporting the association between briquetage and specialized saltmaking. Most European archaeological sites associated with saltmaking contain very large quantities of briquetage. In some Iron Age (first millennium B.C.) coastal saltmaking sites, for example, up to 95% of the pottery remains are briquetage (Woodiwiss 1992: 132). Much smaller quantities of briquetage containers that lack any indication of saltmaking also occur at inland sites (e.g., Cunliffe 1984:426-30). In such contexts the briquetage containers are often thought to represent packaged salt obtained through exchange or tribute (cf. Rodell 1979:160).

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The oldest known briquetage sites date to the Bronze Age in Poland, and they persist through Roman times (early centuries A.D.) throughout Europe. There is a big drop-off of briquetage after about A.D. 400 (Woodiwiss 1992: 183). Hopkinson (1975:13) has noted a distinct east-west time lag, with the earliest known (fourth millennium B.C.) briquetage sites in Poland, while farther west in Europe they date no earlier than the Iron Age (second millennium B.C.). There has been very little archaeological investigation of pre-briquetage saltmaking in Europe, and the great majority of investigations are at sites dating to the first millennium B.C. and early first millennium A.D.

Briquetage and "Red Hill" Sites Scores of briquetage sites are known along the coastlines and around inland salt springs from Poland to Wales and France; several more are known from farther south in interior Germany and Austria, and at least one has been reported from the Black Sea coast in southern Russia (Nenquin 1961:98-99). Coastal sites of this type are particularly abundant, and they are commonly situated along the banks of streams and rivers where daily tidal forces bring marine brine some distance inland. Some briquetage occurs in the form of containers: tanks, basins, jars, bowls, trays, dishes, "goblets," and "augets" (Table 7.6). Other types of briquetage include solid pieces in the form of triangular wedges, rectangular bricks, cylindrical rods or bars,

TABLE 7.6. Briquetage containers. Form large circular basin

Probable Function to boil brine

Dimensions 80 cm rim diameter; ca. 1.0 m high

rectangular basin

to boil brine

20 x 37 cm, 10-12 cm deep

flaring truncated cone

to dry, mold, and package crystalline salt

rim diameter 8-24 cm, 17-40 cm high

rectangular pan

to dry and mold crystalline salt

5-20 cm high, 25-50 cm long, 20-30 cm wide

large bowl

to dry and mold crystalline salt?

20-40 cm rim dia., 8-11 cm high

"goblet" or "auget"

to dry and package crystalline salt

3-8.5 cm high; 4-11.5 cm rim dia.

small "loaf' pan

to dry and/or package crystalline salt

11 x 6 cm, ca. 4-5 cm high

square or rectangular storage tank

to hold prepared brine prior to boiling

1.5-1.8 m on a side, 1.0-1.3 m deep

Adapted from Cunliffe 1984:426-29; Farrar 1975: 18-19; Hopkinson 1975:20-21; 10dlowski 1975:85-87; Morris 1985: 338, 352-53; Nenquin 1961 :24-25, 125; Riehm 1961: 189-90; Rodell 1979: 136, 149; Tessier 1975:53; Woodiwiss 1992:51.

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TABLE 7.7. Briquetage non-containers. Form rectangular brick

Function to stabilize boiling container

Dimensions up to II cm long

triangular wedge

to stabilize boiling container

7-40 cm long, several cm thick and high

cylinder or pedestal

to support boiling containers ever fire

15-30 cm high; 2-5 cm in diameter

tapered firebar

to support boiling vessels in hearth

ca. 7 x 8 cm in x-section; 60+ cm long

rod

to stabilize boiling container

4-12 cm long, ca. 3 cm dia.

rectangular walled hearth

to boil and/or dry salt

0.5-1.5 m long x 23-60 cm wide, ca. 20 cm high

small circular hearth

to boil and/or dry salt

0.8-1.0 m diameter

large circular hearth

to boil and/or dry salt

7 m diameter

circular kiln/oven

to boil and/or dry salt

0.9-2.9 m diameter

rectangular oven/kiln

to boil and/or dry salt

1.2-3.0 m long x 60-120 cm wide, 35-50 cm high

flat plate or disk

to shield boiling vessel from full force of heat

1.6 cm thick, 16 x 12 cm in area; 5 cm dia.

rectangular slab

to subdivide molding vessel into standard units

12-15 cm high

packing pieces

to stabilize other components of boiling operation

varied irregular lumps

Adapted from Baker 1975:31; Bestwick 1975:66-70; DeBrisay 1975:7-8; Jones 1977:317; Miles 1975:27, 29; Riehm 1961: 189-90; Rodell 1979: 136; Tessier 1975:52-53.

thin rectangular slabs, baked clay-floor or hearth-wall fragments, and irregular "clumps" (Table 7.7). Portions of this complex resemble the less-diverse cylinderspacer-socket complex noted earlier for parts of Mesoamerica, North America, and Mesopotamia. European briquetage is itself so varied that stylistically distinct local assemblages can often be defined (e.g., Rodell 1979:153). Many briquetage sites also include quantities of "green slag," believed to be caused by salt being vaporized in the fire. The sodium ions produced react with the steam from moisture in the fuel to give sodium hydroxide ... ; as this is a glass modifier it converts the surface of the hearth into a glaze, which builds up into a thick vitrified layer. [Miles 1975:27]

The data on briquetage form and function are summarized in Tables 7.6 and 7.7. Virtually all briquetage material is characterized by its sloppy and expedient manufacture. Briquetage vessels are invariably poorly fired, poorly finished, and roughly formed. Because they are often physically fragile, briquetage vessels tend to break easily and often, especially since many were exposed to high heat and caustic brine

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solutions; this tendency helps to explain their great quantity in archaeological deposits. Many of the briquetage non-containers (e.g., wedges, bricks, bars) are fired only through their function as supports for boiling vessels in contexts where they are repeatedly exposed to high heat. Many briquetage sites contain so much fired earth and clay that they are referred to as "red hills" (e.g., DeBrisay 1975; Rodell 1979): heaps of reddish burned earth containing masses of briquetage, hearths, clay-lined pits (brine holding tanks), ash and charcoal, measuring up to 2 meters high and 100 meters long. Rodell (1979: 158), citing a 1908 survey, notes that in the early twentieth century a major cluster of some 240 "red hill" sites on the Essex coast (southeastern Britain) was estimated to extend over about 28 acres (11.2 ha), with a total volume of 190,000 cubic meters of debris. Simmons (1978:35) notes a single large "red hill" site in southeastern England that covers an area of about 20 hectares. It appears that much ofthe burned earth in these archaeological sites derives from the historicall y documented practice (as noted in Chapter 5) of firing masses of salty earth in order to facilitate leaching its salt content. According to Riehm (1961: 186-87), [h]ad the clay not been roasted prior to being diluted in water, a milky loam broth would have resulted in which the salt solution could but very imperfectly have been separated from the smeary clay mush. A great deal of salt would thus have been lost. Only the roasting of the salt clay made it possible to separate cleanly the salt from the clay. The saturated salt solution was poured off the sediment while the red dry residue was thrown away.

There is some indication that many of the "red hills" are products of intensified saltmaking during Roman times, an era that witnessed the emergence of new elites and new forms of power wielding, wealth accumulation and prestige building, in which salt played a particularly important role (e.g., Rodell 1979:157-65).

A Reconstruction of Saltmaking at Briquetage Sites Nenquin's (1961: 121-22) archaeologically based reconstruction of saltmaking at a typical Iron Age workshop is still broadly applicable. Prior to boiling, the brine (from a spring or the sea) appears to have been concentrated and strengthened. [B]ig wooden basins may have been used to mix the brine with salt-impregnated turf. The mass which was obtained in this way was then dried and burnt in the circular pans [large hearths]; the ashes were boiled [in large ceramic containers], and the solution evaporated ... by means of heated stones, which were thrown into the solution. [Nenquin 1961:122]

It is now known that prepared brine was stored in large clay-lined or plank-lined tanks prior to being boiled (e.g., Woodiwiss 1992:xi). Once the concentrated brine was available, according to Nenquin (1961:121) it was then processed as follows:

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(1) In a favorably situated and more-or-less horizontal place, a clay floor is constructed, not too wide (up to about 5 feet [1.5 m]); the length is of less importance, and may be considerable. (2) In this clay floor, [clay] cylinders are placed at more or less regular intervals (they are made by hand, and are still in a green [unfired] state), upright and fixed into the floor; the base is sometimes supported by lumps of clay. (3) On these supports, flat and shallow evaporation-pans are placed, made of the same coarse [ceramic] material and filled with salt water. Another possibility is the use of ordinary cooking pots as evaporation vessels; these may have been supported by the clay cylinders above an open fire, or placed on horizontal briquetage bars .... (4) A fire is lit between the cylinder-supports to evaporate the water and to crystallize the salt. (5) After crystallization-the possibility of a regular filling of the pans must not be excluded-the ... salt [is] knocked loose from the sides and bottom, which inevitably results in great quantities of pottery being broken. Indeed, the green clay-cylinders become firmly fixed either to the floor or to the pans themselves ... . In this way much material unfit for re-use originates, and the ... clay floors are baked much harder than the great majority of the cylinders: they must have been used time and again .... (6) The still wet salt is then pressed into the conical beakers and dried.

The Seasonality and Specialization

0/ Iron Age Saltmaking at Briquetage Sites

The north European climate makes it impossible to produce salt with preindustrial technology during the colder months. Saltmaking during the Iron Age and earlier was probably a seasonal activity, complementary with agriculture and perhaps fishing, that was undertaken only during the four warmest months of the year (June through September) between the agricultural sowing and harvest periods (Bradley 1975:22-23; Rodell 1979: 165). There is no indication that Iron Age saltmaking sites were permanent settlements. Permanent settlements are situated on well-drained ground, well away from saltmaking sites in agriculturally marginal places with poorly drained and salty soils. Most of the tempering material in briquetage vessels consists of agricultural plants (chiefly barley, wheat, or oats) and associated weeds that would have been available only in late summer (e.g., Bradley 1975:23; DeBrisay 1978; Miles 1975:28). Coastal or salt-marsh plants never appear as briquetage temper. Because proper tempering was critical for making pottery of the right porosity, these tempering plants were probably deliberately cultivated for the purpose of manufacturing saltmaking vessels. These data (Bradley 1975) indicate that most briquetage was manufactured in the late summer, near the end of the saltmaking season. It is still not known where the briquetage was made, but it was probably at the saltmaking localities, using agricultural plants brought in from the closest cultivated plots. There is very little information about the production of briquetage pottery in Europe. Better insights into the organization of production and redistribution of this

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286 Fig. 26.

Figure 7.5. European "goblet" salt molds (adapted from Kleinmann 1975: Fig. 26).

distinctive pottery would be very informative about the degree to which Iron Age saltmaking was centralized and specialized. Several authors have wondered about this problem. Although there is little mention of fabric-impressed pottery in the European literature, some of the rectangular containers mentioned by Riehm (1961: 18990) seem to have been made in wooden molds that were covered with coarse fabric in order to facilitate the removal from the mold of the unfired vessel. Some briquetage vessels seem to resemble in manufacture and function the Mesoamerican fabricimpressed vessels associated with saltmaking (see above). Jones (1977:318) calls attention to the Mucking site in southeast Britain: a site near the coast with abundant briquetage pottery, but with no other indication of saltmaking (i.e., no leaching, boiling, or drying activities). Sites like Mucking might be localities where briquetage equipment was manufactured, suggesting that not all "saltmaking" sites were actually producing salt, but rather were part of the infrastructure of salt production. Because most saltmaking was near natural salt sources (the sea or inland salt springs), and because fragile briquetage pottery could not be moved very far from where it was produced to where it was used, it follows that briquetage would have been produced at or near saltmaking sites. Many briquetage containers have white deposits on their interior and exterior surfaces; such deposits might well have resulted from the use of saltwater in making pottery, rather than from the use of the vessels in boiling or drying crystalline salt (Morris 1985:339). Because pottery making involves burning fuel in hearths, a great deal of burned earth, ash and charcoal would have accumulated, all of which could easily be confused with the actual production of crystalline salt.

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TABLE 7.8. Salt "goblet" dimensions over time. Type Average Rim diameter 7.0 em Var. A (earliest) 4.0 em Var. B 4.5 em Var. C Var. D (latest) 4.0 em Adapted from Riehm 1961: 184-85.

A verage Depth 4.0 em 6.6 em 4.5 em 3.0 em

Changes in European Saltmaking during the Later Iron Age There was an expansion in the diversity of briquetage and the scale of saltmaking during the last few centuries before the Roman invasion (in the first century B.C.), at a time of increasing sociocultural complexity throughout western Europe (e.g., Bradley 1975:24). One especially significant change was the increased diversity of standardized small briquetage containers believed to be associated with drying, molding, packaging, and redistributing crystalline salt. These containers ("goblets," "augets," or "beakers") probably functioned to dry and harden crystalline salt through slow heating in small cuplike holders elevated on pedestals above direct contact with the fire. Riehm (1961: 184-85) observes that from the late Bronze Age into the Iron Age the form of these goblets shifted so that the upper, cuplike portion became smaller and the supporting pedestal segment became physically detached (Fig. 7.5). This would have permitted continuous reuse of the supporting pedestal, while the upper container would have provided a protective package, of known, standard volume, in which the hard salt could be exchanged. The range of size and volume for these "goblets" is summarized in Table 7.8. Although these "goblet" forms are the best known briquetage salt "packages," other ceramic packa: ':1g containers are also recognized, many occurring with increasing frequency through the Iron Age. Some salt containers were deliberately incised at the time they were made so that they could be broken into standardized segments after the salt inside had dried and hardened (e.g., Cunliffe 1984:430; Farrar 1975: 19; Riehm 1961: 185). Other standardized molds were large rectangular trays, measuring 10-12 cm high, 25-40 cm long, and 20-30 cm wide (Riehm 1961:18990); slightly smaller, loaflike molds are known from the French and Belgian coasts (Hopkinson 1975:20-21). It appears that these evaporating pans were often subdivided, like an ice-cube tray, with rectangular slabs that produced identical cubes of hard salt (e.g., Nenquin 1961: 125, 188). There is some indication that such cubes were produced in standard volumes of about 80 and 160 cubic cm, a 1:2 ratio. In southwestern Britain, Morris (1985:338, 352-53) has distinguished two classes of larger salt containers: very crudely made vessels in truncated conical form with either straight or flared walls, with vessel heights of 22-28 cm, basal diameters of 6.5-16 cm, and rim diameters of 17-23 cm. Interestingly, these vessels approximate

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the size and form of the "flower-pot" containers noted above for the Valley of Mexico (Holmes 1885). Regional studies show that these crude British vessels occur at saltconsuming settlements at up to 140 kilometers from the major salt sources where the containers appear to have been manufactured and filled with salt. The distances between salt producers and salt consumers, as measured by these occurrences, increased substantially in the later Iron Age, indicating an expansion over time in the scale and volume of regional exchange networks (Miles 1985:369-70). Bradley (1975:24) suggests that the archaeologically observed expansion and standardization of briquetage salt containers may have been analogous to the coeval appearance of the standard [iron] ingots described as "currency bars," an appearance which may correspond with the declining iron production in the home. In each case [i.e., that of iron and salt], there may be some implications of an increasing emphasis on balanced commercial transactions rather than such reciprocal social obligations as gift exchange .... [T]hese social changes were themselves partly responsible for the shifts in the nature and balance of exchange mechanisms .... [T]he expansion of the earlier units into larger territorial entities may have undercut the role of local social obligations.

Bradley (1975:25) goes on to suggest that such balanced exchanges might have been particularly important across formally defined sociopolitical borders, where kin-based reciprocity would have been curtailed.

Technological and Organizational Changes in Saltmaking during Roman and Post-Roman Times There were several important changes in saltmaking during the Roman period (ca. 50 B.c.-400 A.D.). The scale of production expanded (much of the "red hill" sites are composed of Roman-period material), and boiling was carried out at higher temperatures in walled, kiln-like ovens (rather than in open hearths) where larger amounts of brine could be boiled and evaporated more quickly, initially using more diverse types of briquetage supports (e.g., immovable firebars) and vessels that were typically smaller, thinner walled, and more disposable than before. Crystalline salt may have been redistributed in larger containers than during the preceding late Iron Age (Bestwick 1975:66-68; Rodell 1979: 157-58). During the first century A.D. in southeastern England there was also a dramatic shift in saltmaking from southern Essex to the Thames-mouth region, a displacement that may have been caused by the development of new Roman agricultural estates in the southern Essex area. Estate agriculture and salt production appear to have been major pillars of the Roman-period economy in southern Britain (Rodell 1979: 160), and the transformations in agricultural and salt production and redistribution can only be understood in the larger context of Romano-British political economy. After the first century A.D., and especially after ca. A.D. 400, briquetage declines and gradually disappears from the European archaeological record (e.g., Bradley

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1975:25; Hopkinson 1975:47; Woodiwiss 1992: 183). This has meant that saltmaking during the later Roman period and in the post-Roman centuries becomes increasingly difficult to recognize archaeologically. Nonetheless, few archaeologists believe that saltmaking declined significantly after Roman times. New organizational and technological modes have been suggested to account for the fade-out of briquetage: the gradual shift to a fully monetized economy; the replacement of ceramic by metal, wickerwork, or wooden utensils; and the increasing prominence of large agricultural estates (villas) that were gradually transformed into feudal holdings in a society increasingly dominated by autonomous warlords and new modes of local and regional exchange after the collapse of Roman rule.

Africa Archaeological studies of African saltmaking are still few in number, and most of them known to me are at sites associated with salt springs in Uganda and Tanzania (e.g., Connah 1991; Fagan and Yellen 1968; Sutton and Roberts 1968). A few coastal sites in West Africa have also been tested (e.g., Allsworth-lones and Wesler 1986). The East African sites are characterized by mounds, usually 1-3 m high, but sometimes standing up to 7.5 m high. These mounds are usually heavily covered with surface pottery, and contain ashes, charcoal, hearths, burned earth, and very large quantities of pottery. The mounds do not appear to contain much domestic refuse; rather they seem to derive from saltmaking debris that built up over time around the workshops: discarded leached soil, broken brine-boiling containers, and hearth remains. Most of the pottery belongs to one or two form classes, and this material often comprises over 90% of the total ceramic assemblage (Fagan and Yellen 1968: 14). Most of the sites so far investigated date to the early and middle second millennium A.D.

Connah (1991 :490-91) distinguishes two common vessel forms associated with ancient saltmaking near Kibiro, Uganda: large, neckless jars, and large, shallow basins. Both forms also occur in domestic residential contexts in the area, so they are not specialized for saltmaking. Their precise saltmaking functions remain unclear. At the Ivuna site in Tanzania, Fagan and Yellen (1968:15-16) distinguish two vessel forms that appear to be associated with saltmaking: simple hemispherical bowls (2025 cm in rim diameter, 15-17 cm high), and wide-mouthed shouldered jars, with rim diameters of 22-29 cm, and heights of 30-34 cm. Over the course of several centuries, bowls gradually replace the shouldered jars. Fagan and Yellen (1968:31) voice a common problem: "we have been unable to link any of the pottery form-classes specifically with salt-working activities." Sutton and Roberts (1968:53-57) distinguish three categories of stratigraphically defined saltmaking pottery from sites near Uvinza, Tanzania: (1) thick-walled open bowls; (2) a diverse assemblage of open bowls and shouldered jars; and (3) poorly

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made, thin-walled basins, up to 50 cm in diameter and 30 cm high. The precise functions of these vessels remains uncertain, although boiling and carrying brine are reasonable inferences for the bowls and jars, respectively. Excavations at some of the Uvinza sites also revealed numerous hearths and several circular "pits lined with hard clay" (Sutton and Roberts 1968:50). The pits, measuring 0.5-1.5 m in diameter and up to 1 m deep, may be brine tanks.

Asia

Several archaeological studies of saltmaking sites have been undertaken along the coasts of Japan (e.g., Kondo 1975) and Thailand (Vallibhotama 1992; VanLiere 1982), and in the middle Yellow River valley of China (Liu 1999). In Japan, saltmaking can be recognized as far back as Late Jomon times, about 2500 years ago. Coastal saltmaking sites from that time through the eleventh century A.D. are recognized by the presence of dense concentrations of surface pottery. Pottery in the earliest saltmaking sites (Late Jomon) appear to be standard domestic vessels, very similar to those used for ordinary household functions. After that period, saltmaking pottery became more specialized, quite distinct from domestic ceramics (Kondo 1975:6162). Particularly notable in some areas is the replacement after the seventh century of larger bowls and jars by small pots with pointed bottoms. In other places at about that same time, however, the Japanese saltmaking vessels "became suddenly larger and sites increased in area and density," and there is some indication that solid cylindrical ("stilt") supports, similar to those used for salt boiling in parts of Europe and Mesoamerica, came into use (Kondo 1975:63). It is still not certain if brine was boiled in ceramic molds, or whether solar evaporation techniques predominated. After the eleventh century, large metal boiling pans began to be used in much larger and more specialized salt workshops-linked to increased contacts with China and the development of more centralized Japanese state organization. Based on excavations on Kiheijima Inlet, on the Japanese Inland Sea, Kondo (1975:61) delineates the archaeological components of a typical sixth-century saltmaking workshop: On the sand near the beach line, a hearth (a shallow, oval-shaped pit with flat stones on the bottom and around the side) was prepared. It is approximately 2 m in length, 1.5 m wide, and 0.3 m deep. A low bank is observed at the edge around the hearth . . . . A working floor spreads outward from the hearth; the floor has a hard surface and sometimes small post holes, probably indicating the existence of a shed over the hearth. The working floor gradually shifts to a dump consisting of layers of thousands of salt-making pottery sherds, ash, and charcoal. A hearth falls into disuse after a time and a new one is constructed at a nearby location or on top of the old one, being accompanied by a new earthen floor and a new dump. So the actual construction observed in the excavation is very complicated.

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Most known saltmaking sites in Thailand date to the second millennium A.D. (Vallibhotama 1992), although there are indications of salt production as far back as several centuries B.C. (Van Liere 1982: 116). As in so many other parts of the world, the best-known saltmaking sites are characterized by large mounds littered with potsherds and containing abundant ash, charcoal, hearths, and great quantities of pottery. The handful of excavated Thai saltmaking sites all appear to have employed brine boiling-not surprising, perhaps, in view of the region's high rainfall and high humidity. In the course of her surveys and excavations in a region of early Chinese state development in the middle Yellow River valley, Liu (1999) has unearthed unusual circular structures that may be storage facilities for salt produced around the shores of the Hedong salt lake during the second millennium B.C. Liu suggests that early Chinese states in this region were vitally concerned with control of the production and distribution of both salt and metal.

Overall Summary and Conclusions This worldwide comparative perspective extends and, to a degree, clarifies the Mesoamerican archaeological data on ancient saltmaking. It also indicates that archaeologists interested in saltmaking, wherever they work, face very similar problems of understanding the material remains at their disposal. On the positive side, especially in Europe and southeastern North America where the greatest amount of investigation has so far been concentrated, archaeologists have been able to make clear associations between saltmaking and a variety of material remains. Specific workshop functions-such as brine storage, brine boiling, and salt molding, drying, and packaging-are often unmistakable. Reasonable inferences about the seasonality of saltmaking and the settlement patterns of saltmakers can often be made. In some areas it has even been possible to estimate the sizes of regional redistributional networks on the basis of the distribution of certain ceramic forms thought to be standardized salt packages. Several important suggestions have been made about how changes in saltmaking over time reflect the overarching polities within which the saltmakers were embedded. There has been much less success in assigning specific functions to specific material remains. In most cases, only the most obvious sites can be confidently recognized as saltmaking: mounded sites, with unusually heavy concentrations of poorly made pottery and certain other ceramic forms (briquetage), situated near obvious salt sources. Archaeologists working in several relatively well studied areas continue to have problems in understanding, or even recognizing, potentially more subtle traces of saltmaking. It remains all too easy to confuse infrastructural production (e.g., the manufacture of pottery used for saltmaking) with salt production. At least two highly specific questions lack answers. First, why was fabric-marked pottery

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associated with saltmaking in only two regions-highland central Mexico and the southeastern U.S? Second, how can the production of dietary salt be distinguished from the production of salt intended for nondietary functions (for example, dye mordants)? With these kinds of issues in mind, I now turn to the final chapter of this monograph. My main task will be to integrate the full archaeological, ethnographic, and historical information at my disposal in a search for the archaeological implications of my Nexquipayac ethnographic study.

-8-

Conclusions

Traditional saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico occurs around the edges of a shallow, saline lake (Lake Texcoco) in a large basin that lacked any external drainage until the late sixteenth century. The region is characterized by a distinct rainy (JuneSeptember) and dry (October-May) season. Even today, after more than 400 years of massive trenching and tunneling to provide artificial drainage outlets, remnants of Lake Texcoco reappear during the rainy season months. Carbonates, chlorides, and sulfates of sodium and potassium, carried in solution by streams descending from the surrounding hillslopes, have accumulated in and around the lake over the millennia. The accumulation and seasonal precipitation of these chemical compounds have provided the basic raw material for saltmaking. Whatever may have been the long-term changes caused by wetter and drier cycles with periodicities of decades or centuries, lake levels have always been subject to significant seasonal fluctuation. Such fluctuation has meant that large expanses of desiccated lakeshore land have been exposed every year to intense sunlight during the long dry seasons. Solar evaporation over the dry-season months has caused the concentration and precipitation of the salty compounds that have come to be known generically as tequesquite. Countless natural cycles of evaporation, concentration, and precipitation have acted to produce the saline environment of Lake Texcoco and its immediate environs. Historic, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric sources indicate that saltmaking around Lake Texcoco has existed since at least A.D. 1500. Archaeological studies defini-

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tively extend that date back to at least 1200, and perhaps as far as 1000. Nevertheless, our understanding of prehispanic saltmaking has remained very generalized, and even for the Late Postclassic it is difficult to specify the technology and organization of saltmaking or the role of salt in the domestic and political economy. Since it is still virtually impossible to recognize the presence of pre-Middle Postclassic saltmaking, we cannot yet understand the long-term significance of saltmaking and salt exchange in the Valley of Mexico. I concluded Chapter 2 by suggesting some archaeological correlates of prehispanic saltmaking around Lake Texcoco (Table 2.3). I also suggested that brine boiling in the Middle and Late Postclassic may have been preceded in earlier periods by saltmaking based on solar evaporation, and perhaps even on the simple harvesting of naturally precipitated salts around remnant ponds on the desiccated lakeshore. Some combination of brine boiling and solar evaporation also seems reasonable to expect in some contexts. I now expand those preliminary suggestions in light of the comparative information considered in Chapters 3-7.

Potentially Appropriate Saltmaking Techniques in the Valley of Mexico Prehispanic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico could have been very different from the historic-period saltmaking in the same region. Salt can serve both dietary and nondietary needs. In some parts of the world, in addition to their dietary importance, salty compounds have been used to preserve meats and other foods, to feed to domestic animals, and to produce dye mordants, soaps, and medicines. In most cases, salts that are not intended for human consumption need not be pure NaCI or free of impurities, and the making of such dietary and nondietary salts may have been accomplished in quite different ways. We should be prepared to find different archaeological remains associated with different kinds of saltmaking. In my following summary of possibilities, I proceed from relatively simple to relatively complex saltmaking processes. Such changes might have occurred over time in the Valley of Mexico with the development of more complex social forms. However, nothing would have precluded the concomitant use of several different saltmaking techniques at anyone period of time. Indeed, increasing sociopolitical complexity might well have incorporated greater diversity in saltmaking technology over time. The Use of Brine for Flavoring and Cooking Foods Several ethnographic accounts describe the use of liquid brine to flavor and cook food. The water of Lake Texcoco, especially in relict lakeshore ponds late in the dry season, might have contained high enough concentrations of salt to be suitable for such purposes (Tables 3.1-3.4). Simple enlargements of such relict ponds, and the

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deliberate acceleration of solar evaporation through sequential evaporating pans, could have expanded the production of concentrated brine. Individuals or small groups might have collected such brine and redistributed it according to kin-based obligations of sharing and reciprocity. Small quantities of crystalline salt might easily have been made from brine by boiling it in small bowls at domestic kitchen hearths. Such boiling vessels would probably not have differed very much from ordinary ceramic cooking pots. Alternatively, the brine from leached salty earth might have been employed directly in seasoning and cooking, without transforming it into crystalline salt, as is often done today with sal negra brine at Nexquipayac (see Chapter 2). The two main difficulties would be the logistical problems of packaging and transporting brine at any distance from the lakeshore source area, and the lack of naturally concentrated brine during the rainy season. There might be virtually no associated archaeological remains.

The Use of Plant Ash vs. Crystalline Salt Throughout the historic period, the surroundings of Lake Texcoco have been so saline that many types of plants do not thrive there. Those that do are likely to concentrate salt in their roots and stems. Rzedowski (1957) and Rzedowski et al. (1964:5152) have identified a community of salt tolerant grasses and bushes on the saline lakebed and lakeshore zones in the Valley of Mexico: Distichlis spicata, Eragrostis obtusiflora, Atriplex linifolia, Skuaeda nigra, Xanthocephalum centauroides, Sesuivium portulacastrum, Sporobolus pyramidatus, Scirpus americanus, Scirpus validus, Polygonum sp., Lemma sp., Wolffiella sp., Spirodela sp., Eichhornia crassipes, Limnobium stoloniferum, and Myriophyllum hippuroides. Although the prehispanic distribution and abundance of these salt-tolerant plants remains uncertain, they would probably have been widely available to ancient inhabitants of the lakeshore zone. Practices in several parts of the world indicate that burning salt-rich plants and using their ashes as a condiment may have been a feasible alternative to collecting naturally precipitated salt. Alternatively, the salty plant ashes may be leached to obtain brine. Or, the salt content can be obtained by simply drying, grinding, and sieving the salty plants, and using their seeds, stalks, or attached salt crystals without any additional processing. The latter technique is particularly interesting in view of the well documented use of Distichlis spicata for this purpose in the Central Valley of California, and the great abundance of this same species in the Valley of Mexico (Ebeling 1986:185,414). As historically documented in New Guinea and India, the salt concentration in these and other plants could have been increased before burning by first soaking them for weeks or months in the salty water of remnant ponds around the lakeshore during the dry season. The principal archaeological remains of these practices would be subtle, perhaps nothing more than ephemeral large hearths scattered along the

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Plate 8.1. Use of broad-bladed wooden planting tool near Texcoco, Mexico, in the 1930s. Photographed by Bodil Christensen . Courte y ofIrmgard W. Johnson, 1994.

dry-season lakeshore. Many such hearths would probably have been destroyed each rainy season by the actions of rains, streams, and the rising lake levels. Harvesting Natural Tequesquite during the Dry Season Crystalline salt becomes seasonally available in the Valley of Mexico in the form of natural precipitates around the edges of saline ponds that form in topographic lows as lake levels recede during the long dry season. As recently as about 1940 such saltltequesquite deposits were exploited at Nexquipayac. Almost certainly, these deposits would always have been available during the later dry season around the peripheries of Lake Texcoco, as is suggested by air photographs taken as recently as 1954 (Plate 1.1). We also need to remember that, as in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, saline crystals on the water surface could have been blown by strong afternoon winds and conveniently piled up along sections of the lakeshore. The harvesting of these natural deposits would leave few, if any, clear archaeological traces. Harvester~ could simply have collected salt crystals or salt crusts in baskets or carrying cloths, per-

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haps breaking apart the larger crusts with sticks or stones. Small sherd or lithic scatters might be the only physical evidence of such activities, although these materials might have built up significantly in particularly favored localities that were revisited year after year. Excavations at small encampments that may have existed at such places might produce remains of ?ostholes where small shelters were erected, small hearths where meals were prepared, and perhaps a few large stone pounders used to break up thicker salt crusts. Harvesting the windblown deposits of crystalline salt should be even more difficult to detect by material remains. Low brush fences erected along favored lakeshore locations to impede the movement of wind-blown deposits (as practiced today in East Africa) are not likely to endure very long. Nevertheless, small encampments associated with such fences might endure as sherd or lithic scatters on the surface and as postmold impressions visible in excavations. However, such scatters would be functionally nonspecific; they could result from a wide range of activities associated with the exploitation of lake resources.

Simple Solar Evaporation: Replicating and Extending Nature It would have been fairly simple to expand the natural tequesquite deposits available seasonally around the margins of Lake Texcoco. Natural ponds that formed in topographic lows on the desiccated lakeshore during the long dry season could have been enlarged and their capacities expanded by heaping up earth embankments designed to trap and hold more salty water for longer periods of time. As clearly hinted at by Sahagun (1961) and Martir de Angeleria (1965), and as described by Tylor (1861) for the nineteenth century (see Chapter 3), lake brine could have been directed in ditches through a series of interconnected evaporating ponds, the last of which would have been the scene of the actual salt harvest. The archaeological remains of such facilities would probably be subtle at best. Because of seasonal rise of water levels, and the impact of rainfall and stream action during the rainy months, features like ditches and earth embankments probably would not have remained intact for more than one or two saltmaking seasons. Because no soil leaching was involved, there would have been no accumulation of soil in mounded form, and few, if any, ceramic artifacts would have been used in harvesting the crystalline salt. Simple wooden poles and scoops, and carrying baskets made of reeds or fiber would have sufficed, together with some shovel- or hoelike tools (that could have been made entirely of wood) to clear and enlarge the evaporating ponds and build up the surrounding embankments. Such wooden implements were in use in the Valley of Mexico for agricultural purposes into the 1930s (Plate 8.1), and were commonly employed in the sixteenth century (Fig. 8.1). Temporary camps with shelters adequate for a few days' or a few weeks' occupation might be manifested by postmolds, small hearths, and small accumulations of cooking pottery.

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Figure 8.1 Use of wooden shovel-like tools in sixteenth-century maguey cultivation (adapted from Sahagun 1963: Fig. 750).

This type of saltmaking would have required little investment in infrastructure or labor. A disadvantage would have been the restriction of saitmaking to the later half of the dry season, and perhaps the very early part of the rainy season-probably from February through mid-June. Reliance upon natural lakeshore ponds would probably have restricted saltmaking to a small proportion of the overall desiccated lakeshore zone.

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Intensified Solar Evaporation The limitations of depending upon "natural" evaporating ponds, or upon the simple enlargement of these features, could have been overcome by the preparation of larger and more numerous artificial evaporating ponds along the lakeshore. This would have involved digging shallow depressions, probably interconnected by ditches through which brine of progressively higher salt concentration could be led for final "harvesting" in the last, lowest pond. The infrastructural costs-digging ditches, clearing and digging the ponds, and forming the surrounding embankments-would have been substantial, and most of these facilities would have needed replacement or extensive repairs one year to the next. An alternative to preparing so many evaporating ponds might have been to carry out the final stages of solar evaporation in large ceramic basins, that could be moved around as needed over one saltmaking season and from one year to the next. Even though saltmaking dependent on solar evaporation would necessarily have been restricted to the dry season, it may have been possible to significantly increase dry-season salt production by boiling the most highly concentrated brine solutions. Such a procedure would also have made it possible to produce finer-grained saltperhaps a consideration in certain contexts when tribute was imposed, or when access to fine-grained salt became important for building and maintaining prestige. Such supplemental boiling would also have made it possible to extend saltmaking into the rainy season. The first use of supplementary brine boiling on any scale may well correlate with the first need to accumulate significantly larger quantities of crystalline salt: a result, perhaps, of population growth or tributary demands imposed on saltmakers in the context of increasingly hierarchical and centralized polities. The archaeological correlates of intensified saltmaking should be more abundant, visible, and specific, especially if it included more supplementary brine boiling. Saltmaking encampments might have become larger and more permanent, with a need to feed and house more people for longer periods, and increased variability in containers for storing and boiling brine. Roofed shelters would probably have been built to shelter the boiling operations. More digging and embanking and ditching would have been undertaken. Archaeologically we should encounter larger and denser sherd scatters on the surface, and clear evidence in excavations for larger hearths and larger, more enduring shelters. However, without any leaching of salty earth, there would be only a minimal presence of earth mounds-especially as most saltmaking sites would remain along the dry-season lakeshore, in localities that would usually be covered with water during the rainy season. Exceptions might be around the margins of small islands or peninsulas of higher ground that extended well into the lakeshore zone.

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This has been the dominant mode of saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico during the historic period. Archaeological evidence suggests that it probably extends back to the Middle Postclassic (ca. A.D. 1200), with a particularly strong development during the Late Postclassic. The main changes relative to less intensive, less specialized forms of saltmaking are (1) the leaching of salty earth to obtain brine, and (2) the boiling of this brine. Solar evaporation techniques may well have continued to be employed during the dry season at workshops along the dry-season lakeshore. Most of these dry-season workshops would not have been used during the rainy season. Rainy-season saltmaking would necessarily have employed soil leaching and brine boiling in more permanent workshops situated at higher elevations above maxiumum lake level. Localities where dry-season and rainy-season workshops might coexist would be around the margins of islands or peninsulas of high ground extending into Lake Texcoco. The excavated Xocotitlan site (Banos and Sanchez 1998) may be an example. The archaeological manifestations of this type of saltmaking could be very clear and abundant, and some have probably already been identified around the margins of Lake Texcoco: mounds of discarded leached soil heavily littered with sherds of specialized fabric-marked pottery; proximity of workshops to permanent lakeshore settlements; and an overall context of large, dense regional population, and hierarchical polity. Less obvious manifestations would include more hints of the integration of saltmakers within centralized redistributional networks (e.g., market systems). Such hints already exist in the form of small quantities of Texcoco Fabric-Marked pottery at settlements far from the lakeshore. Excavations at the saltmakers' settlements themselves should reveal the presence of market-derived materials that complement the TFM sherds at salt-consuming sites. A potentially significant archaeological problem arises because of the long-term use of the best saltmaking localities around the lakeshore. Here, the larger scale and more intensive practices of the later Postclassic would probably cover and destroy the smaller, more subtle traces associated with earlier saltmaking. This problem is exacerbated by the recycling of leached soil that can easily mix earlier and older deposits.

The Infrastructure of Saltmaking Harvesting the salt that nature provides through dry-season solar evaporation requires virtually no infrastructure and few, if any, specialized implements or techniques. More intensive forms of solar evaporation techniques probably would have required the preparation each year of artificial evaporating ponds surrounded by low earth embankments and perhaps connected by shallow ditches.

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If brine boiling comes into play, there are significantly increased costs in the form of buildings, ceramic containers, and accessing raw materials. Substantial increases in infrastructural costs would be expected if saltmaking were undertaken on a yearround basis by specialists. This would include the cost of building and maintaining permanent shelters for boiling and residential facilities; constructing and maintaining large hearths or ovens; securing adequate supplies of salty soil, and transporting it to workshops where leaching and boiling are carried out; disposing of the leached soil; securing boiling fuel; and making or acquiring specialized pottery for leaching, boiling, drying, and packaging salt. Fully specialized saltmakers could only exist within the framework of a regional redistributional network through which they could exchange salt for other necessities that they did not produce themselves, such as food, cloth, pottery, some types of tools, other craft products, and perhaps even fuel. Pottery is a special problem for archaeological studies of ancient saltmaking. We saw in Chapters 3-6 that many saltmakers require a great deal of pottery: as containers for holding and storing brine and water, for solar-evaporating and boiling brine, for molding, drying, and packaging crystalline salt. Much of this pottery is highly specialized, with few, if any, other uses. Because pottery is so heavy, and because so much of it is required, many saltmakers would have needed to make most of their pottery at or near their workshops. The archaeological remains of pottery-making can easily be confused with the archaeological remains of saltmaking at sites which, in their totality, might be classified as saltmaking workshops. As noted in Chapter 3, there is a suggestion in the Florentine Codex that sixteenth-century saltmakers around Lake Texcoco made their own ceramic salt containers. If salt production and pottery production are not clearly separated, one might get an exaggerated idea of how much salt was actually being produced in such localities. Fabric-marked pottery probably came to be associated with saltmaking during the later Postclassic in the Valley of Mexico primarily because of the speed with which cheap ceramic vessels could be formed in fabric-lined molds, from which they could be easily detached prior to firing. What remains puzzling is why the association between fabric-marked pottery and saltmaking is so restricted, both in Mesoamerica and worldwide. Apparently this association only exists in central Mexico (the Valley of Mexico and the nearby Tehuacan region), and in portions of the southeastern U.S. Except for Tehuacan, the use of fabric-marked pottery in saltmaking apparently did not extend over long periods of time. Why, if fabric-marked pottery was so functional in saltmaking, was it not used more often? The apparent distribution of archaeological briquetage in some respects roughly complements the distribution of fabric-marked pottery. With the exception of Tehuacan, wherever briquetage occurs in saltmaking contexts, fabric-marked pottery is usually absent, and vice versa. The situation in Africa, Latin America, and Asia remains less certain in this regard, but this generalization certainly holds true for more completely studied areas in North America, Mesoamerica, and Europe. Another potential problem for archaeologists is the coexistence of saltmaking for

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TABLE 8.1. Estimates of pre hispanic salt requirements at different periods in the Valley of Mexico. Period

Population

Early Formative 4,000 25,000 Middle Formative Late Formative 80,000 Terminal Formative 140,000 250,000 Classic 170,000 Epiclassic 130,000 Early Postclassic Middle Postclassic 200,000 1,200,000 Late Postclassic Adapted from Sanders et al. 1979: 186

Physiological Needs (metric tons) 2.9 18.3 58.4 102.2 182.5 124.1 94.9 146.0 876.0

Overall Needs (metric tons) +10%=3.2 +10%=20.1 +15%=67.2 +25% = 127.8 +50% = 273.8 +30% = 161.3 +25% = 118.6 +40% = 204.4 +50% = 1314.0

different purposes in the same workshops, or in the same saline-lakeshore niche. For example, it may be difficult or impossible to distinguish between the production of coarse and impure sa~tJtequesquitelbrine to be used as a mordant for dyeing cloth, and the production of fine-grained and pure crystalline salt for human dietary needs. The archaeological remains of these two very different types of salt production could easily be confused, even in excavated contexts: both involve the burning of fuel, the production of ash, the leaching of soil and ash, and the use of many kinds of ceramic vessels.

The Geopolitics of Salt Table 8.1 presents my estimates for the annual salt needs in the Valley of Mexico at different times between the Early Formative and the Late Postclassic. As indicated in Chapter 1, I assume that each individual requires an average of 2 g of "artificial" salt per day for strictly physiological needs in an agriculturally based economy. For each period I increase that amount by an arbitrary percentage that seems intuitively suitable for the overall organizational complexity that characterized the period (as discussed in Sanders et al. 1979). For periods of greater complexity I have increased the physiological needs by higher percentages, in order to take into account nondietary needs, which includes tribute, craft production, and interregional exchange. Significant adjustments, of course, could easily be made, and eventually they will have to be. These rough estimates provide some feeling for how much salt was "needed" in the Valley of Mexico at different time periods between ca. 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1500. The ethnohistoric sources considered in Chapter 3 suggest that only a small proportion of these amounts was ever imported from outside the Valley of Mexico, even

Conclusions

303

under the domination of the Aztec state. These figures suggest two periods of especially rapid increase in salt need: (1) the later centuries of the Formative era, and (2) the later Middle Postclassic and early Late Postclassic. The scale of the latter, in particular, is unprecedented. A less substantial increase from Terminal Formative to Classic is also notable. The estimated increase during Late Postclassic times is so large that it must have required unprecedented technical and organizational means to achieve. This, of course, is precisely what the known archaeological record suggests: the number and size of saltmaking sites around the peripheries of Lake Texcoco greatly increased, and great quantities of a highly specialized new type of pottery (TFM) that is clearly associated with saltmaking appeared at these sites. There are archaeological indications (noted in Chapter 7) that such large-scale, specialized saltmaking may have had its roots under Tula's domination during the Early Postclassic in the far northwestern corner of the Valley of Mexico. Most salt "needs" during the Formative, Classic, and Epiclassic periods could probably have been met by part-time saltmaking based on solar evaporation during the dry season. For the Early and Middle Formative the simple harvesting of naturally precipitated salt crusts would probably have sufficed. In the eastern Valley of Mexico, such activity might have been managed on a seasonal basis by some of the inhabitants of the large nucleated village near Chimalhuad.n in southeastern Lake Texcoco (Tx-MF-13, Parsons 1971:25,28). It is quite possible that dry-season solar evaporation would have been supplemented during the rainy seasons of these periods by burning salty plants and using their ashes to flavor foods and provide for artisanal needs. As noted in Chapter 7, archaeological evidence suggests that the EI Tepalcate site (Tx-TF-46, in southeastern Lake Texcoco) may have played a very special role in salt production during the Terminal Formative. It appears that most saltmaking in the eastern Valley of Mexico (keeping in mind that we still have very little archaeological data from the western side of Lake Texcoco) was concentrated at EI Tepalcate during the critical period in which the direct antecedents of the Classic Teotihuacan state were developing. This was a time of primary state formation, in which radically different kinds of sociopolitical forms may have produced some radically different kinds of production and exchange of key resources, such as salt. This might have been analogous to the new mechanisms that were being employed at about the same time in the Valley of Oaxaca, at a comparable stage of state development, to acquire certain key tropical products (Spencer 1982). The two primary Terminal Formative centers in the Valley of Mexico were Teotihuacan, in the northeast, and Cuicuilco, in the southwest (Fig. 1.2). These centers were apparently the "capitals" of two large, hierarchical polities that faced each other across the expanse of Lake Texcoco. EI Tepalcate is approximately halfway between the two capitals. A large Middle Formative village (Tx-MF-13) and a substantial concentration of smaller Late Formative settlements (Tx-LF-26, -27, -28,

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

and -29; Parsons 1971 :25, 30) are situated just a few kilometers southeast of EI Tepalcate. These earlier lakeshore settlements may have been involved in salt harvesting or saltmaking in the centuries prior to the development of EI Tepalcate. Interestingly, there are few other known Middle Formative or Late Formative sites on the eastern shore of Lake Texcoco, and so, for reasons still unknown, Formative saltmaking may always have been primarily concentrated at the lake's southeastern corner. If, as appears likely, there was a massive increase in the scale and intensity of saltmaking at EI Tepalcate during Terminal Formative times, it may have been based on the earlier concentration of saltmakers and saltmaking expertise already present in that part of the lakeshore. Both Cuicuilco and Teotihuacan were situated several kilometers distant from saltmaking terrain on the southwestern and northeastern shores of Lake Texcoco, respectively (Fig. 1.2). Even so, both large Terminal Formative centers were much closer to the nearest potential lakeshore salt sources than either was to EI Tepalcate. Nevertheless, the great bulk of saltmaking in the entire Valley of Mexico may have been concentrated at EI Tepalcate during the Terminal Formative. This is contrary to expectations based on straightforward economic models. A sociopolitical hypothesis may be needed to account for it. As noted in Chapter 5, Sutton and Roberts (1968:70) provide an excellent analogy from nineteenth-century East Africa: a context in which three "chiefdom" polities "shared" access to a single major salt source in order to maximize the share of each polity leader, and to help maintain peaceful relationships between them-a combination of economic and sociopolitical motives in a context in which continuous access to salt was an essential component of chiefly prestige building and maintenance. This African situation may help explain the Terminal Formative relationships between Cuicuilco, Teotihuacan, and EI Tepalcate. The great expansion of salt production at EI Tepalcate may have resulted from a deliberate strategy by the elites of two neighboring polities-emergent states or complex chiefdoms-to maximize their own access to salt while, at the same time, "keeping the peace." The Terminal Formative in the Valley of Mexico differs significantly from the East African context: in the latter there was only a single major salt source (a concentration of salt springs), whereas salt would have been potentially available around the entire perimeter of Lake Texcoco, a linear distance of approximately 110 km. If Terminal Formative saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico was concentrated only at EI Tepalcate, there must have been some way to curtail saltmaking around the rest of the long lakeshore zone. In any event, saltmaking at EI Tepalcate may have played a key sociopolitical role in early state development in the Valley of Mexico. This rapidly vanishing archaeological site cries out for new field study before it is too late. Surprisingly, the substantial salt needs of Classic Teotihuad.n appear to have left little clear archaeological trace. I am at a loss to account for this, except to note that the role of saltmaking at EI Tepalcate during the Terminal Formative appears to have ended abruptly as Cuicuilco rapidly declined and Teotihuacan quickly emerged as predominant at the end of the Terminal Formative (Tzacualli phase, Fig. 1.3). There

Conclusions

305

is no Classic occupation at EI Tepakate itself, and the known Classic occupation of the southeastern shoreline of Lake Texcoco is limited to two small "hamlets" of uncertain function (Parsons 1971 :55). With no further need to "share" the Lake Texcoco salt resources between competing large polities, saltmaking seems to have changed radically by Classic times. As noted above and in Chapter 7, there are a few small Classic sites on the shore of Lake Texcoco. However, aside from their lakeshore location, there is so far nothing known about them that suggest saltmaking. The best hints come from Litvak's (1964) excavation of a Classic mound on the northeastern shore of Lake Texcoco, and from Mayer-Oakes' (1959) stratigraphic excavation at EI Risco on the north shore. For the Classic period in the Valley of Mexico, we may be facing a situation akin to Northern Yucatan and the Sayula basin during the Postclassic: that is, saltmaking undertaken on a seasonal basis by small encampments of saltmakers scattered widely around the lakeshore, at low elevations that would correspond to the dryseason shoreline, and covered again with water during each rainy season. The small scale and physical fragility of these workshops, and their reliance on solar evaporation, would make their archaeological traces subtle and difficult to recognize. Salt and saltmaking may have played a distinctly less critical role in Classic economy and polity relative to the antecedent Terminal Formative. Archaeologically there is nothing to suggest that either the technology or socioeconomic role of saltmaking around Lake Texcoco changed significantly during the subsequent Epiclassic period after the collapse of Classic Teotihuacan in the seventh century A.D. As noted in Chapter 7, the first hint of such change comes from the far northwestern corner of the Valley of Mexico, an area strongly dominated by Tula (Fig. 1.1). Here Mayer-Oakes (1959) defined a complementary distribution of Early Postclassic Texcoco Plain and Late Postclassic Texcoco Fabric-Marked pottery in a deep excavation on the far north shore of Lake Texcoco; and in our 1973 survey we found several Early Postclassic mounded sites with very heavy litters of large jars or basins around the edges of Lake Xaltocan-Zumpango. This is the first hint of the presence of something like the expanded and intensified salt production of the Late Postclassic, and it may have been directly stimulated by the needs of Tula during its florescence as a dominant Early Postclassic center. If saltmaking expanded and intensified in the northwest during the Early Postclassic, there is no archaeological indication that anything comparable occurred in the southern two-thirds of the Valley of Mexico. The latter was characterized by low population density, a near-absence of large settlements, and it was in the sociopolitical frontier zone where Tula and Cholula (to the southeast, just outside the Valley of Mexico in Puebla, Fig. 1.1) may have confronted each other during the Early Postclassic. If the southern half of the Valley of Mexico did comprise a frontier between Tula and Cholula during the Early Postclassic, the relationship between these two centers apparently was not mediated by shared access to salt in the way that may have characterized Teotihuacan-Cuicuilco interaction a millennium earlier.

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

A Hypothetical Developmental Scenario It may eventually become possible for archaeologists to recognize five distinct stages of pre hispanic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico. Technology, scale, economy, and polity are closely and directly interrelated. The poorly known western side of Lake Texcoco may one day yield information that could render this proposed scenario inadequate.

Stage 1: The Early, Middle, and Late Formative, ca. 1000-250 B.C. This was an era prior to the development of state polities, in which the largest and densest populations occupied the southern half of the Valley of Mexico. Although regional population expanded rapidly during the Middle and Late Formative, there are no clear indications of full-time, specialized, year-round saltmaking. There are substantial Middle and Late Formative settlements around some parts of the Lake Texcoco shoreline, but in virtually all cases, access to good agricultural land appears to have been the major factor for their location. The poorly drained eastern margins of Lake Texcoco, one of the core zones of Postclassic saltmaking, were quite sparsely occupied. Saltmaking would have been carried out on a seasonal basis by people who resided full-time in large agricultural settlements, especially in those closest to the lakeshore. Salt production would have been dominated by simple dry-season salt harvesting of natural tequesquite precipitates from remnant pools along the desiccated lakeshore. Some more intensive forms of solar evaporation may have gotten underway in Late Formative times. Some burning of salty plants for their ashes may have occurred during the rainy season. As suggested above, archaeological traces would be subtle and nonspecific.

Stage 2: The Early Terminal Formative (Patlachique Phase), ca. 250-50 B.C. This was a period of radical change, both sociopolitically and in terms of the scale, intensity, and organization of saltmaking. The strategic geopolitical considerations discussed above caused salt production for the entire Valley of Mexico to be concentrated at El Tepalcate in the southeastern corner of Lake Texcoco. Archaeological evidence from El Tepalcate suggests large-scale solar evaporation using stonelined evaporating ponds, with final evaporation taking place in large ceramic basins. Some brine used in saltmaking at El Tepalcate may have been produced by leaching salty earth in large ceramic vessels seated atop stone foundations (Plates 7.5, 7.6), as in modern Nigeria (Plate 5.5). If saltmaking occurred elsewhere around the shores of Lake Texcoco, it probably would have been based on a continuation of the smallscale, low-cost, and archaeologically still almost invisible salt harvesting techniques characteristic of Stage 1. New field research at El Tepalcate is essential to evaluate

307

Conclusions

this stage; in addition, such research promises to be very informative about a key stage of sociopolitical evolution.

Stage 3: The Late Terminal Formative (Tzacualli Phase), Classic, and Epiclassic, ca. 50 B.C.-A.D. 900 Cuicuilco had declined, or even vanished as a significant settlement, and until ca. 650, Teotihuacan completely dominated the region. Saltmaking no longer played the key geopolitical role it had during the early Terminal Formative (Patlachique phase), and saltmaking once again becomes archaeologically almost invisible. Smallscale saltmaking encampments, using techniques based primarily on harvesting and solar evaporation, would have been scattered around the entire lakeshore. Because soil-leaching and brine boiling were not practiced, and because saltmaking continued to be seasonal, archaeological traces would, once again, be subtle and nonspecific. The collapse of Teotihuacan as a major center appears to have had no visible impact on the scale, technology, or organization of lakeshore saltmaking during the subsequent Epiclassic. A.D.

Stage 4: The Early Postclassic, ca.

A.D.

900-1100

Here it is necessary to distinguish between the far northwestern corner of the Valley of Mexico, and the remaining southern two-thirds. The former area was clearly within the domain of the new center of Tula, now at its peak of regional and interregional influence (Cobean 1978,1990; Cobean and Mastache 1999; Diehl 1983; Healan 1989; Mastache 1996). An early form of the intensive, specialized saltmaking characteristic of the historic period may have appeared around the northwestern lakeshore. This saltmaking was apparently characterized by leaching earth and boiling brine, with the use of very large quantities of a specialized form of pottery (perhaps ancestral in function to Texcoco Fabric-Marked). Farther south in the Valley of Mexico, in the sparsely populated zone that appears to have been beyond the direct influence of Tula, saltmaking seems to have continued much as during the preceding millennium, with few known archaeological manifestations.

Stage 5: The Middle and Late Postclassic, ca.

A.D.

1100-1520

Rapid population growth and the development of a centralized Aztec state provided the impetus for a radical transformation of saltmaking. It was at this time that the historically known saltmaking technology based on earth-leaching and brine boiling was fully implemented. For the first time, the archaeological record is full of many highly visible "saltmaking sites." The presence of Texcoco Fabric-Marked

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

pottery, often in astonishing abundance on numerous large mounds, strongly suggests a large-scale, highly specialized saltmaking industry. This industry certainly supplied most of the dietary needs for the unprecedentedly large regional population, but it probably also supplied saltltequesquite/brine for several different craft and artisanal needs-for example, the preparation of dye mordants. There is good reason to think that brine-boiling and solar-evaporation techniques both continued to be practiced, especially in view of the high fuel costs of brine boiling in a region where deforestation was probably becoming a significant problem.

Future Research Directions It may already be too late for archaeologists to study prehispanic saltmaking in the Valley of Mexico on any basis other than salvage excavations. The ravages of urbanization, suburbanization, and the intensification of commercial agriculture have made it virtually impossible to design research on the basis of systematic access to a number of well-preserved sites and intact study areas. Because the lakebed-lakeshore zone has been for several decades on the "front line" of destructive modern changes in land use, the archaeological study of saltmaking is particularly difficult. Two kinds of future research needs are obvious: (1) several of the surviving Late Postclassic salt mounds littered with Texcoco Fabric-Marked pottery need to be excavated; (2) the unique El Tepalcate site, now on the very cusp of total obliteration, deserves very special attention. These investigations will provide a great deal of new information about the technology and sociology of Late Postclassic and early Terminal Formative saltmaking. Despite the ravages it has suffered in the past six to eight years, the zone around Tonanitla in southern Lake Xaltocan, still offers one of the best possibilities for new field research on Late Postclassic saltmaking. There are a few comparable, although smaller, features that still survive along the northeastern shoreline of Lake Texcoco. The Xocotitlan salvage excavations, in the northwestern corner of Lake Texcoco, provide a good model for how new salvage excavations at comparable sites might be conducted and about what information they might produce. Much less obvious is how to understand saltmaking from all time periods prior to the later Postclassic. In most cases, we do not even have good candidates for possible saltmaking sites, and many (probably most) of the best possibilities have been destroyed during the decades since they were located on surveys. An inventory of surviving lakeshore sites obviously needs to be made, and excavation programs planned on the basis of these findings. Just as important, the entire survi ving lakeshorelakebed (which is primarily the northeastern sector, westward of a line between the modern towns ofTexcoco and Tepexpan (Fig. 1.2) needs to be intensively examined for the purpose of finding the subtle remains of activity areas where salt harvesting, solar evaporation, and perhaps the collection and burning of salt-rich plants may have been carried out at many different time periods.

Conclusions

309

This surviving lakeshore-lakebed zone, as badly disturbed as it now is, still offers good potential for archaeological study. There is still a good deal of undeveloped terrain, and the presence of small sherd and lithic scatters casually encountered by myself and others in recent years throughout this zone, some dating to Formative times and even earlier (e.g., Mirambell1972), indicate that post-Pleistocene alluviation has been minimal. This surface study, designed to locate "off-site" remains, would have to be much more intensive than the settlement pattern surveys carried out decades ago around the lake margins (but rarely within the "lakebed"). The availability of accurate Geographical Positioning System (GPS) devices now make it possible to locate these subtle remains with some precision once they are discovered, and, just as important, to relocate them again in order to undertake more intensive mapping, surface collection, and excavation. New archaeological research should be integrated with geomorphological studies aimed at delineating whatever changes in the overall geochemical environment may have occurred throughout prehistory. Historic records, for example, hint at significant changes in tequesquite precipitation and the salt content of lakeshore soils as a result of large-scale lake drainage during colonial times. Such changes may have required significant technological and organizational shifts in saltmaking.

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Epilogue Saltmaking at Nexquipayac in 1998

Ignacio and MartIn Cas areal both died in 1990. Their abandoned workshops are now covered with new residential structures. Sebastian Nopaltictla, still hale at 70, has recently closed his own workshop. He continues part-time saltmaking through overseeing and assisting the efforts of a middle-aged nephew at a new workshop in another part of Las Salinas.

Glossary Agua salada-The brine solution produced by filtering water through a soil mixture packed into a pila pit.

Barcina-Large double-sided ixtle-fiber bag, used for packing heavy loads on burro back. Also cerron and costal. Briquetage-Highly specialized ceramic artifacts associated with storing, boiling, or heating brine, and for drying and packaging crystalline salt.

Camaclalli-Soil used as a foundation for the drying bed upon which drippingwet fresh salt is placed after removal from the boiling pan.

Camada-The bed of soil upon which the dripping-wet fresh salt is placed to dry. Camitas-Deep fried pork. Cerron-See barcina. Clalmanctli-Soil taken from long-abandoned saltmaking workshops, for use as a component of the soil mixture to be leached in the pila pit.

Costal-See barcina. Ejido-Communal agricultural and herding land, whose title is vested in the Mexican federal goverment, and whose use rights are granted to individual inhabitants of local communities. Enfriadores-Small ceramic jars in which the liquid saltpeter solution is cooled. Homo-clalli-Workshop soil from around the base of the stove inside the boiling hut. Sometimes used as a component of the soil mixture leached in the pila pit. Ixtapepextle-A piece of coarse cloth used as a filter at the base of the pila pit. Ixtle-Maguey fiber, commonly used for making string, cord, sandals, and cloth. larilla-A local weedy plant (Stevia salicifolia) used during the boiling process to dissipate foam and add flavor to the salt. Maso-A large wooden mallet, used to pound the walls of a new pila in order to harden them. Paila-A boiling pan made from sheet metal. Pila-A conical pit into which the soil mixture is loaded to be leached.

313

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The Last Saltmakers of Nexquipayac, Mexico

Pila-clalli-Leached soil, removed from the pila pits and discarded in the workshop. This soil is reused as a component of the new soil mixture that is loaded into the pila pit for leaching. Quema-A complete batch of agua salada boiled in the paila. This usually amounts to about 30 liters of liquid. Sacahuistle-The sharp-edged grass (Distichlis spicata) that grows thickly on the lakeshore plain, on ground too saline for other vegetation. Sal amarilla-Yellow salt, a minor type of salt produced at Nexquipayac for use in curing meat. Sal blanca-White salt, the main type of salt produced at Nexquipayac. Today used mainly as a household condiment. Sal negra-Black salt, the second most common type of salt produced at Nexquipayac. Used exclusively for the production of carnitas. Salitre-Saltpeter, used as a component of gunpowder in fireworks. Produced in Nexquipayac until the 1940s, but very little since around 1950. Tequesquite-As used by modern saltmakers in Nexquipayac, this term refers to a type of lakeshore soil used for the production of sal negra. More generally, however, the term refers to impure salty deposits around the shoreline of Lake Texcoco. Tierra azuleada-Soil with a dark blue-brown tint, which is esteemed as a good source of salt. Tierra de ferrero-Refers to the lakeshore zone, outside the cultivated area, from which derive the various naturally salty soils used for saltmaking in Nexquipayac. Tierra dulce-A type of lakeshore soil, literally "sweet earth," used for the production of sal blanca. Tierra limpia de los pueblos-Literally "clean earth from the villages." Organic ash-rich refuse taken from household dumps until the 1940s. An important component of the soil mixture used in the production of saltpeter. Tierra picante-A type of lakeshore soil, literally "sharp earth" or "biting earth," used for the production of sal blanca and sal negra.

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