Salt Production, Trade and Consumption in European Pre-Industrial Societies: Analytical Methods and Socioeconomic Contexts

Salt, often referred to as “white gold,” has played a fundamental role in human history, not only as an essential element for biological survival but also as a strategic and symbolic resource. From the earliest human communities, salt has been central to processes such as food preservation, economic production, and the shaping of social and power relations. However, studying salt and salt-related issues in preindustrial societies has always been extremely difficult due to the lack of an appropriate research strategy to detect its presence in the archaeological record. This has led to an underestimation of salt's paramount role in the food economy of the ancient world. In November 2021, a five-year project on the importance and production of salt in antiquity began at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology of the University of Groningen. The aim was to study salt production and its socio-economic context in Latium Vetus, from the Bronze Age to Roman times. As part of this project, an international workshop on the importance of salt production in antiquity was held in October 2022 at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR). The contributions from that workshop, along with others that have been added in the meantime, form this special issue titled Salt Production, Trade and Consumption in European Pre-Industrial Societies: Analytical Methods and Socioeconomic Contexts.