Preliminary Investigation into pre-Industrial Salt Production: an experimental approach

Salt, or halite, has been extracted from saline waters and sediments since the Neolithic period. Since then, the techniques used are natural evaporation (in salterns) and artificial evaporation (by applying heat from combustion). Within the study of archaeological salt-production areas, distinguishing between the two possible production processes allows for the inference of valuable insights into the socio-economic organization of the societies under investigation. Through the integration of mineralogical (XRD) and spectroscopic data (MIR and FAR-IR), this experimental work aims to identify geochemical markers of artificial evaporation processes in salt production from seawater.