Table Of ContentSalz und Gold: die Rolle des Salzes im prähistorischen Europa
Salt and Gold: The Role of Salt in Prehistoric Europe
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Salz und Gold:
die Rolle des Salzes
im prähistorischen Europa
Akten der internationaler Fachtagung (Humboldt-Kolleg)
in Provadia, Bulgarien
30 September – 4 October 2010
Herausgegeben von
Vassil Nikolov und Krum Bacvarov
Provadia • Veliko Tarnovo
2012
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Salt and Gold:
The Role of Salt
in Prehistoric Europe
Proceedings of the International Symposium (Humboldt-Kolleg)
in Provadia, Bulgaria
30 September – 4 October 2010
Edited by
Vassil Nikolov Krum Bacvarov
and
Provadia • Veliko Tarnovo
2012
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Gedruckt mit Unterstützung
der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Bonn, Deutschland
Printed with the support
of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Bonn, Germany
Sprachredaktion:
Krum Bacvarov (Englisch), Tabea Malter (Deutsch), Gassia Artin (Französisch)
Grafikdesign: Elka Anastasova
© Vassil Nikolov, Krum Bacvarov (Hrsg.)
© Verlag Faber, Veliko Tarnovo
ISBN 978-954-400-695-2
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Inhalt / Contens
List of Contributors ................................................................................................................................ 7
Vorwort der Herausgeber / Editorial ..................................................................................................... 9
Vassil Nikolov
Salt, early complex society, urbanization: Provadia-Solnitsata (5500-4200 BC) ................................. 11
Olivier Weller
La production chalcolithique du sel à Provadia-Solnitsata :
de la technologie céramique aux implications socio-économiques ...................................................... 67
Hristo Etropolski
Technology of salt extraction by means of a Late Neolithic furnace from Provadia-Solnitsata .......... 89
Margarita Lyuncheva
Tell Provadia-Solnitsata: The late Neolithic Karanovo III-IV period
in the West Black Sea Coast context ..................................................................................................... 93
Viktoria Petrova
Tell Provadia-Solnitsata: the Middle Chalcolithic layer
in the context of the cultural development of the Western Black Sea area ......................................... 103
Petar Leshtakov
The late Chalcolithic at Provadia-Solnitsata in the context of the West Black Sea Coast .................. 109
Krum Bacvarov
Saltmaking and boundaries: Within and Without at Provadia-Solnitsata ........................................... 119
Desislava Takorova
Long distance contacts in later prehistory: ecological, economical and social implications .............. 123
Dan Monah
L’approvisionnement en sel des tribus chalcolithiques sédentaires
et des tribus des steppes du Nord de la Mer Noire ............................................................................. 127
Ion Sandu, Olivier Weller, Marius Alexianu
Analyses archéométriques sur les moules à sel chalcolithiques de l’est de la Roumanie .................. 143
Marius Alexianu, Olivier Weller, Robin Brigand, Roxana-Gabriela Curca
Ethnoarchäologische Forschungen zu den Salzwasserquellen
der moldauischen Vorkarpaten, Rumänien ......................................................................................... 155
Valeriu Cavruc, Antony Harding
Prehistoric production and exchange of salt in the Carpathian-Danube Region ................................ 173
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Cristian Schuster, Ionut Tutulescu
Zum Salz im Nordosten Olteniens (Rumänien)
in der Vorgeschichte bis ins Mittelalter. Eine Einführung .................................................................. 201
Nenad Tasic
New evidence on salt use in the Neolithic of Southeast Europe ......................................................... 213
Slavisa Peric
Die neolithischen Siedlungen in der mittleren Morava-Ebene und die Slatina-Toponymie ............... 219
Thomas Saile
Salt in the Neolithic of Central Europe: production and distribution ................................................. 225
Albrecht Jockenhövel
Bronzezeitliche Sole in Mitteldeutschland: Gewinnung - Distribution - Symbolik ........................... 239
Thomas Stöllner
Prähistorischer Steinsalzbergbau - wirtschaftsarchäologische Betrachtung und neue Daten ............. 259
Martin Hees
Die Bedeutung der vorgeschichtlichen Salzgewinnung in Südwestdeutschland ................................ 277
Peter Attema, Luca Alessandri
Salt production on the Tyrrhenian coast in South Lazio (Italy)
during the Late Bronze Age: its significance for understanding contemporary society ..................... 287
Elisa Guerra-Doce, F. Javier Abarquero-Moras, Germán Delibes-de Castro,
Jesús del Val-Recio, Ángel L. Palomino-Lázaro
Salt production at the Villafáfila Lake Complex (Zamora, Spain) in prehistoric times ...................... 300
Isabella Tsigarida
Bereiche der zentralen Einflussnahme auf Salz
im Römischen Reich am Beispiel der Provinz Dakien ....................................................................... 313
Valeri Yotov
Bulgarian control over the Salt Road in Transylvania during the 9th century:
The archaeological evidence ............................................................................................................... 323
Evgeny Golovinsky
Das Kochsalz - Urgeschichte und Gegenwart einer bedeutenden Substanz ....................................... 333
Mariana Mitewa, Christo Kolev
Sodium Chloride: food and poison ..................................................................................................... 341
Petia Penkova
Salt as a medicine for gold .................................................................................................................. 345
Anna Coleva-Dimitrova
Das Salz in der bulgarischen Mikrotoponymie ................................................................................... 349
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V. Nikolov & K. Bacvarov (eds). Salz und Gold: die Rolle des Salzes im prähistorischen Europa / Salt
and Gold: The Role of Salt in Prehistoric Europe. Provadia & Veliko Tarnovo, 2012, 225-238.
Salt in the Neolithic of Central Europe:
production and distribution
Thomas Saile
Die Bekanntschaft mit dem Salz war der erste Schritt zu einer höheren Kultur.
[The acquaintance with salt was the first step to a higher culture.]
(H. Freydank 1929, 145)
Die Geschichte des Salzes ist die Geschichte des Ganges der Civilisation überhaupt.
[The history of salt is the history of the progress of civilization.]
(V. Hehn 1873, 73)
The common and daily presence of salt in our lives today has lessened our awareness of how
valuable salt is. Things were different but a couple of centuries ago, when the possession of salterns was
of tremendous importance to the mercantile economy of absolutist regimes. Wars were fought over salt;
in 1611, for instance, a protracted conflict between the dukes of Bavaria and the archbishops of Salzburg
over the right to exploit the saltworks at Berchtesgaden ended with the overthrow of Archbishop Wolf
Dietrich von Raitenau (1559-1617). Up to the middle of the 19th century, indeed, the economic importance
of salt was comparable to that of crude oil in our present-day economy.
Salt occurs naturally as rock-salt or in dissolved form as brine. According to legends, the
discovery of saline springs frequently resulted from the intense observation of nature, as humans took
note of places where animals went to lick salt, and became sensitive to the particular characteristics of
the plant cover in the vicinity of salt springs.
Two entirely different strategies were applied as salt winning techniques: evaporation of brine
and mining of rock-salt. Producing salt from brine involves several steps: obtaining and preparing brine,
cleaning and condensing it, refining and boiling it until the salt crystallizes, and finally preparing the salt
for transportation. This article is concerned with the earliest stages in the development of such techniques
in Central Europe during the Neolithic. The relevant archaeological evidence will be presented below in
a chronological order, followed by some remarks on Neolithic salt trade.
In general, the dating of prehistoric artifacts and structures connected to the exploitation, trade,
and consumption of salt presents considerable difficulties, as chronologically sensitive material is rarely
uncovered in close association with salt exploitation-related features. As we shall see below, the frequent
appearance of rich archaeological finds in the surroundings of medieval and post-medieval saltworks
cannot be considered as evidence of a corresponding prehistoric exploitation of salt; in practice, such
correlations are often deceptive. Neither can isolated finds of salt-producing ceramics (briquetage) in
settlements or graves serve as a clear-cut indication of salt production; these are evidence, at best, of
salt trade.
In Central European inland areas, the most common procedure of salt winning documented
during the Neolithic is brine evaporation by means of briquetage. The forms of briquetage, generally
divided into supporting elements (stands) and vessels, show great regional and chronological variation
(fig. 1). Briquetage is mainly a coarsely tempered and thick-walled kind of ceramics that was fired
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Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the development of briquetage forms in Central Europe. EN = Early Neolithic,
MN = Middle Neolithic, LN = Late Neolithic, FN = Final Neolithic, EBA = Early Bronze Age, TBA = Tumulus
Bronze Age, UC = Urnfield Culture, HA = Hallstatt, LT = La Tène, RIA = Roman Iron Age
at low temperatures. Frequently the surface is reddish and treated carelessly. Such production-related
ceramics are predominantly found in fragmentary condition. The earliest briquetage found so far dates
to the middle of the fifth millennium cal. BC: In Galicja, southeastern Poland,1 briquetage consists
of wide-mouthed vessels and conical beakers (Jodłowski 1977, 89, fig. 7). D.W. Müller (1987; 1988:
91ff, fig. 1) has described dish-shaped briquetage vessels of the Bernburg culture (end of the fourth
millennium cal. BC), the so-called “flat goblets with disk-shaped feet” from the site of Langer Berg
in the Dölauer Heide near Halle on the Saale (Saxony-Anhalt).2 W. Matthias assumes an Early Bronze
Age dating – i.e. the first half of the second millennium cal. BC – for troughs and oval pillars from
Central Germany (Matthias 1961, 184ff; Matthias 1976; Riehm 1984, 177; Simon, K. 1985). The
heydays of briquetage utilization are the Late Bronze Age and the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Both in Galicja
and in Central Germany, the chronological sequence of briquetage forms is spectacularly interrupted
by intervals during which no such ceramics appear. Possibly there was no salt production in these
areas during such periods. Alternatively, one might imagine that during some periods regular household
ceramics were used to process brine (Riehm 1962, 375) – a type of salt production that could hardly be
confirmed archaeologically.
Early Neolithic salt production?
For the moment, all our evidence that salt was produced during the Early Neolithic in Central
Europe is circumstantial, and the technological procedure by which salt was obtained during that time
remains completely unknown; no briquetage appears to had been used as yet. Nevertheless, there is
no lack of hypotheses. For instance, F. Geschwendt proposed that eight brine springs of Sülbeck in
the Grubenhagen countryside of southern Lower Saxony (fig. 2) were already exploited during the
Bandkeramik in the second half of the sixth millennium cal. BC; for a settlement with an earthwork of
1 In order to differentiate Polish Galicia from Spanish Galicia, the Polish spelling (Galicja) is used for the former
and the Spanish spelling (Galicia) for the latter.
2 Some pieces of the material from Halle have been analyzed chemically (Müller 1988, 92).
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Fig. 2. Places of possible Neolithic salt production in Central Europe. Evidence has been found so far at Halle on
the Saale in Central Germany and at Barycz in Lesser Poland (cf. table 1)
Table 1
List of Neolithic salt sites mentioned in the text:
1 Artern
2 Auleben
3 Bad Nauheim
4 Barycz / Galicja / Lesser Poland
5 Beusterburg near Heyersum
6 Großobringen
7 Halle on the Saale / Dölauer Heide / Central Germany
8 Hallstatt / Salzkammergut / Upper Austria
9 Lons-le-Saunier / Franche-Comté
10 Northeim
11 Poiana Slatinei near Lunca
12 Salins-les-Bains / Franche-Comté
13 Salzderhelden
14 Schöningen
15 Schwäbisch Hall
11 Slatina Mare near Solca / Cacica / Bukovina
11 Slatina Veche near Cucuieţi
16 Sülbeck
17 Tuzla
18 Werl
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