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Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya (Maya Studies) | 
 enlarge | Author: Heather Mckillop
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Category: Book
Buy New: $65.00
New (3) Used (5) from $49.99
Sales Rank: 2217790
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0813025117
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.47664409728209021
EAN: 9780813025117
ASIN: 0813025117
Publication Date: August 30, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 5 weeks
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Product Description
In Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya, Heather McKillop reports the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of Late Classic Maya salt works on the coast of Belize, transforming our knowledge of the Maya salt trade and craft specialization while providing new insights on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene as well. Salt, basic to human existence, was scarce in the tropical rainforests of Belize and Guatemala, where the Classic Maya civilization thrived between A.D. 300 and 900. The prevailing interpretation has been that salt was imported from the north coast of the Yucatan. However, the underwater discovery and excavation of salt works in Punta Ycacos Lagoon demonstrate that the Maya produced salt by boiling brine in pots over fires at specialized workshops on the Belizean coast. The Punta Ycacos salt works are clear evidence that craft specialization took place in a nondomestic setting and that production occurred away from the economic and political power of the urban Maya rulers, thus providing new clues to the Maya economy and sea trade. McKillop also presents new data on sea-level rise in the Late Holocene that extend geologists' and geographers' sea-level curves from earlier eras. Likewise, she enters the environmental-versus-cultural debate over the Classic Maya collapse by evaluating the factors that led to the abandonment of the Punta Ycacos salt works at the end of the Classic Period, synonymous with the abandonment of inland Maya cities.
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