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Salt Makes the Maya: Small Salt Kitchens in a Large Economic System 
 

McKillop, Heather 2019 Maya Salt Works. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 254 pp., 

ISBN 978-8130-5633-3 

 

In Maya Salt Works, Heather McKillop assembles more than a decade of archaeological 

research at Classic period salt works along the southern coast of Belize. She builds on her 2002 

volume, Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya (University Press of Florida), in which she 

demonstrated that specialized salt production workshops around the Punta Ycacos Lagoon 

provided salt to inland populations. The present work focuses on additional sites in the same lagoon 

system. McKillop investigates the Paynes Creek complex of salt works to understand the 

organization of salt production and its role in the larger Maya economy. Due to sea-level rise, most 

of the salt works are now submerged in the shallow waters of coastal lagoons, where McKillop 

and her teams have discovered and mapped more than 4,000 wooden posts, beams, and wedges 

from submerged buildings. Combined with radiocarbon, ceramic, and other fine-grained analyses, 

this work provides a rare image of the physical spaces of craft production and how household labor 

specialization can meet a large regional demand for salt.  

 In Chapter 1, McKillop introduces the general characteristics of Classic Maya economics, 

with emphasis on the roles of gift exchange, tribute, and feasting in the establishment and 

maintenance of sociopolitical networks. She presents a brief overview of the economic role of salt 

in global ancient and modern economies then introduces the Paynes Creek Salt Works as a test 

case for evaluating the economics of salt in the Maya world. In the second chapter, McKillop 

provides a detailed description of how the archaeologists discovered, mapped, and sampled the 

abundant preserved wooden structural features now beneath the lagoon’s water and thick layers of 

mangrove peat. Systematic coverage of the lagoon floors by sight and feel revealed pottery and 



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patterns of preserved, in situ wooden posts that, when mapped, represent 45 individual salt works 

in the Paynes Creek complex.   

 McKillop structures Chapters 3 through 5 as a series of questions and hypotheses about 

characteristics of Maya salt production. Readers not already acquainted with the range of 

traditional means for harvesting salt will be especially interested in Chapter 3, because it is here 

that McKillop describes each of the major methods that have been documented, archaeologically 

and ethnographically, around the world. McKillop reviews the processes of concentrating and 

evaporating brine as well as the ceramic artifacts associated with non-mechanized salt production, 

known collectively as briquetage. Paynes Creek briquetage spans the entire Late Classic period 

and consists of a variety of vessels used to evaporate brine over a fire. The occurrence of leached 

mounds of earth, ceramic funnels and strainers, and a canoe used as a strainer are evidence for the 

common practice of washing salt-impregnated earth to create a concentrated brine. The brine is 

then boiled in pots, which are supported above a fire by three clay cylinders. There is limited but 

intriguing evidence that brine also may have been evaporated in large, shallow ponds using solar 

energy.  

For archaeologists accustomed to terrestrial survey and identification of sites, McKillop’s 

methods of identifying, mapping, and recording submerged wooden posts may become 

increasingly useful as global sea-levels continue to rise. As described in Chapter 4, her team 

investigated 110 sites at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, many of them precisely mapped to reveal 

dozens of rectangular structures arranged in linear patterns parallel to the lagoon shores. 

Differentiating hardwood from palmetto posts and measuring post diameter revealed patterns in 

the construction of coastal salt kitchen and attempts to retain land against rising seas. As detailed 

in Chapter 5, further identification of the tree species used to construct Paynes Creek buildings 

largely mirror the decisions made by modern Maya. Different species are chosen for different parts 

of the buildings, the choices reflecting a strong preference for hardwoods. Palmetto palms were 

used for retaining walls at the edges of sites.   

The identity of the Paynes Creek salt makers and the scale of their production is discussed 

in Chapter 6. McKillop reviews archaeological and ethnographic literature for examples of how 

salt-making is integrated into household production. She notes that making salt is a form of multi-

crafting that can involve the production of tools and other necessary equipment on a seasonal cycle. 

The identification of individual buildings at Paynes Creek, combined with the spatial patterns of 



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artifact types and densities, reveals a clear picture of specific activity areas. Briquetage accounted 

for more than 90% of the pottery found in several buildings. McKillop carefully examines evidence 

for multiple contingent crafting activities associated with the household production of salt, 

including making pottery; salting fish and gathering food; construction; crafting wooden tools, 

canoes, and paddles; gathering firewood; carving calabashes; spinning cotton; and trading. This 

thorough analysis demonstrates that Paynes Creek salt makers lived at the lagoon’s edge year-

round and boiled brine in salt kitchens adjacent to their houses. More than 40 radiocarbon dates 

from the structures demonstrates that the Paynes Creek Salt Works were established at the 

beginning of the Classic period to meet a high demand for salt. Over the next few centuries, 

structures had to be moved further from the lagoon’s edge to escape sea-level rise. Radiocarbon 

dates also reveal episodic construction of additional buildings along the lagoon, which McKillop 

interprets as “infilling” of space by salt-makers eager to be close to the source of brine.  

In her previous studies of salt works, McKillop discovered that salt pots were made locally 

and in standardized sizes and forms by different work parties or households located at each salt 

works. This pattern is confirmed in the current study, suggesting that pots for boiling brine were 

made at home by the workers of individual salt kitchens. Patterns of similar tree species used to 

construct the salt kitchens strengthens the picture of households working independently. One of 

the most important findings in this book is McKillop’s estimate that ten households of salt 

producers, if they worked year-round on the contingent crafts required for making salt and spent 

four months making the salt itself, could have provided enough salt for the needs of 24,000 people. 

Chapter 6 illustrates the rich results of years of comprehensive documentation and thorough 

analysis, including radiocarbon dating, spatial analysis, pertrographic, and use-wear analysis.  

Chapter 7 addresses the place of salt in the Classic Maya economy. There is evidence at 

Paynes Creek for salting fish. Facilitated by canoe travel, salt-makers moved salt and salted-fish 

to inland markets, where they traded for pottery, cacao, ocarinas, chert, obsidian, and other goods. 

McKillop points out that salt production was not simply an economic transaction; it was likely 

integrated into a widespread ritualized exchange of goods and social obligations that underpinned 

the Maya political structure.  

The final chapter of this fascinating volume reminds us that salt was integral to Maya 

society. While it may be an archaeological invisibility, McKillop amply demonstrates that well-

executed, long-term research renders salt, and even its place in the Maya value system, quite visible 



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in architecture, pottery, and other thoroughly analyzed data. The book contains indispensable 

comparative material for researchers in the expanding field of salt anthropology, but it also serves 

as a model to which all archaeologists can aspire when martialing huge amounts of information 

for a comprehensive synthesis.  

 

Ashley A. Dumas is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of West Alabama, 

where she also manages the Fort Tombecbe Archaeological Site. She studies the relationship 

between salt production and the development of complex society in the southeastern United 

States.  

 

 

 

 

© 2021 Ashley A. Dumas 

 


