Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya

Foreword

Tables / xvii Foreword The Maya have fascinated scholars and lay-public alike since their ruined jungle-covered cities were brought to the world’s attention by explorers in the mid nineteenth century. Today hundreds of thousands of tourists visit these once remote archaeological ruins each year and come into contact with the modern descendants of the Maya. Public interest in the archaeology of this region also is evident in the news coverage and television programming related to the Maya. At the same time, academic research on the Maya has reached an all-time high. The breadth of contemporary topics enveloped in Maya studies is quite extensive. Not only have traditional anthropological topics (archaeology, ethnography, and epigraphy) related to the Maya continued to be researched and published, but such studies have actively contributed to broader debates concerning warfare, urbanism, sustainable agriculture, culture contact, and hermeneutics . With the recent prominence of the Zapatistas and the Highland unrest in both Mexico and Guatemala, Maya studies also necessarily have become concerned with modern political developments involving nationalism , ethnic exploitation, human rights, and the role of tourism in a global economy. Heather McKillop’s Salt is the first volume in a new Maya Studies series that is being published by the University Press of Florida. Subsequent books in the series will focus on both the ancient and contemporary Maya peoples of Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and may include works on Maya who have moved from their original heartland to the United States and elsewhere. The goal for the series is to provide a high-quality integrated outlet for scholarly works dealing with Maya archaeology, epigraphy, ethnography, and history. While the series is expected to be largely archaeological in content, it is envisioned that xviii / Foreword ethnohistoric, hieroglyphic, ethnographic, and even modern political studies of the Maya would also be published. It is expected that some volumes might also be “commissioned” to fill necessary gaps in the series and to address topics in Maya studies for which theoretical and methodological discord exists. It is our hope that the series will focus on publishing cutting-edge theoretical works, methodologically sound site-reports, and tightly organized edited volumes with broader appeal.We are actively seeking the best book-length contributions to the series; volumes will take a variety of forms and may consist of original book-length texts, revised dissertations, translations of works only available in Spanish, edited works, or site reports. An important part of the series will be the “site report” or its equivalent (such as an ethnographic monograph). The site report has been and will continue to be a mainstay in the field of Maya studies. These detailed and well-illustrated expositions are of great utility to individuals with an interest in the Maya, and the data contained within these volumes will continue to be of use to future generations. We intend to anchor the Maya Studies series with site reports from our own excavations in the Maya area at the sites of Caracol and Santa Rita Corozal in Belize. The current work by Heather McKillop is an excellent first volume for the new series. Salt was of great importance to the ancient Maya. It was a core resource that was both procured and traded from the coasts into the Maya interior. While the production and political control of salt has been documented both archaeologically and ethnohistorically in the northern Maya lowlands, particularly by Anthony Andrews, McKillop’s research shows the long-term production of salt along the eastern Maya littoral. She documents the existence of different salt-production techniques as well as various levels of effort that were expended in salt production along the Belizean coastline. Solar evaporation was used in the more northern portions of Belize, such as Ambergris Cay; boiling was more common in the southern coastal areas near Placencia and Punta Ycacos. McKillop’s work at Punta Ycacos clearly demonstrates that salt was produced for export and that this production process went beyond that necessary for the household level. An extensive artifact assemblage associated with salt production has been recovered from the Belizean coast. Unslipped ceramic pots were set upon pottery vessel supports and used to boil brine in order to extract salt. Both brine and partially processed salt were stored in redslipped water jars. Eventually, the salt was hardened into cakes for transport . McKillop further suggests that the lack of standard lithic assem- Foreword / xix...