Anthony Harding & Valerii Kavruk (ed.). Explorations in salt archaeology in the Carpathian zone.

Chapman, John

ANTHONY HARDING & VALERII KAVRUK (ed.). Explorations in salt archaeology in the Carpathian zone (Main Series 28). 332 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. 2013. Budapest: Archaeolingua; 978-963-9911-44-4 hardback 66 [euro].

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The prehistory of salt exploitation and usage has been a growth field during the last two decades, with major advances in the knowledge of Neolithic salt exploitation and cumulative additions to our understanding of Iron Age salt mining and usage. The Goldilocks of this salt party has clearly been the Bronze Age. Equally, a brief look at the map of known salt sites in Marie-Yvane Daire's excellent book (Daire 2003: 13) shows that the vast majority of research has focused on Western Europe, with few sites mentioned east of Hallstatt and the Durrnberg. It is here that Harding & Kavruk's new volume fills two major gaps at a single stroke: Bronze Age salt exploitation in the Carpathians. Given Renato Peroni's claim that the first industrial revolution occurred in the Late Bronze Age of Europe, one may expect major evidence for salt sites during this period of dramatic change, whether in settlement expansion or in the intensification of production.

The main authors make use of the talents of 15 collaborators, providing a diversity of specialised information that is, however, well integrated into the overall storyline. The result is a multi-period account, starting with Eszter Banffy's general overview of Neolithic salt production, then moving into the main focus of the Middle-Late Bronze Age, and continuing into the Dacian Iron Age, with post-Roman and early medieval salt production, and concluding with ethnohistorical and ethnographic research. The research is multi-regional, with four important new sites (three in Transylvania, one in Ukraine), as well as some discussion of older results from Slovakia and Poland. One of the great strengths of recent salt research concerns its inter-disciplinarity, and this is a particular feature of this volume, with archaeology complemented by ethno-archaeology, ethno-history, experimental archaeology, and historical and archival work. The core of the research in this volume is the extraordinary upland salt production sites in the East Carpathians (Chapter 3), best represented at the site of Bade Figa, with its Bronze Age, Dacian and Late and post-Roman exploitation and spectacular preservation of wooden remains--both structures and artefacts. There is also a good attempt at the definition of a dated sequence of salt exploitation techniques from the Bronze Age onwards, although there remains some uncertainty over the function of some of the structures. The volume is well buttressed by a string of specialist reports--on wooden remains, on their dendrochronological dating and on their conservation.

In a volume that typifies the high standards of the publisher, Archaeolingua, there are many high points, not least Harding & Kavruk's immaculate documentation, based upon colour images that bring out the excitement of discovering Bronze Age timbers on the surface of an upland basin near a modern village. Three phases were defined at Baile Figa: the Bronze Age use of a plank-built dam, with wooden troughs, wattle fences and bundles of poles; an Iron Age box structure, with wooden ladder, dug through the Bronze Age layers; and a post-Roman post construction with possible re-use of troughs. The summary of carpentry techniques (p. 115) underlines the importance of oak in all phases, whether for split logs, bracing timbers, wedges, shovels and decorated ladders, as well as smaller tools such as bowls and a funnel. The significance of woodland management is implied rather than thoroughly reviewed.

The pinnacle of archival tracking was the discovery of the long-lost wooden trough of previously unknown date, first found at Kiralyvolgy in what is now Carpatho-Ukraine, and currently in the stores of Sopron Museum, on the other flank of the Austro-Hungarian Kingdom! AMS dates from the Kiralyvolgy trough, as well as examples at Baile Figa and the other two East Carpathian sites of Sasarm and Caila, confirm the use of the trough technique from the start of the Late Bronze Age. The experimental methods, however, do not appear to cover the full range of interpretative possibilities of how the troughs functioned, at least as indicated by Kavruk.

The key social conclusion is the definition of three levels of salt production (Chapter 10): domestic, for local consumption; industrial, for long-distance trade; and ritual, for other forms of long-distance exchange. The argument that each level of production was accomplished using different extractive techniques is well marshalled and convincing. The Baile Figa site is interpreted as a good example of industrial-scale production, with its highest output coeval with the peak of tin-bronze deposition in Transylvania.

In a complex, multi-authored work, it is perhaps inevitable that some research questions have been treated in less detail than others. Thus, in the Introduction, there are no references to general works on salt, with an over-generous assumption that readers already know the importance of salt in diet, health and symbolic meaning. The Neolithic salt chapter highlights the rather speculative notion of salt trade links between the Central German Linearbandkeramik and the Middle-Late Neolithic in Hungary to the detriment of other, more relevant themes. The interpretation of the excellent GIS-based maps of Bronze Age salt sites in the Bistrifa-Nasaud--Beclean region (figs 4.96-4.100) could have been developed much further. It would also have been informative to relate the wooden objects in the catalogue to the radiocarbon dates, and it would have been valuable to provide AMS dates for the three floating dendrochronological sequences--the first from upland Romania! Equally, petrological identification of a sample of the excavated ground and polished stone tools would have helped set the site reports in their wider regional context. Finally, the debate on industrial-scale salt production in the Bronze Age could have benefited from the time-depth provided by a consideration of the scale of salt production at Provadia in relation to the mid fifth millennium BC Varna I cemetery, as well as the huge demand for salt from the fourth millennium BC Trypillia mega-sites in the Uman-Kirovograd region--it would seem unlikely that industrial-scale production was first developed in the Carpathian Bronze Age.

This volume represents a major contribution at once to Bronze Age studies and Carpathian archaeology. Harding & Kavruk deserve our congratulations for putting Bronze Age salt exploitation firmly on the map. Much of the text comes across as vintage Harding--terse, solidly grounded in matters empirical, albeit a little cautious on social interpretations. Overall, this volume marks a fine and welcome addition to the Archaeolingua Main Series.

doi: 10.15184/aqy.2014.15

Reference

DAIRE, M.-Y. 2003. Le sel des Gaulois. Paris: Errance.

John Chapman

Department of Archaeology, Durham University,

UK (Email: j.c.chapman@durham.ac.uk)