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A Re-Evaluation of Salt Resources for the Cucuteni-Tripolye Area

2007, L'exploitation du sel a travers le temps, Chapter: „A Re-Evaluation of Salt Resources for the Cucuteni-Tripolye Area ”Publisher: Colectia “Bibliotheca Memoriae Antiquitatis”, XVIII, Ed. Constantin Matasă, Piatra Neamt; Editors: D. Monah, Gh. Dumitroaia, O. Weller, J. Chapman

https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.2121.4241

This study proposes a re-evaluation of salt resources for the Cucuteni-Tripolye area, as well as for the steppe region North of the Black Sea. Previous attempts to identify salt resources within the territory between the Moldavian piedmont and the Volga basin took into account almost exclusively the rock salt and salt springs of the Eastern Carpathians. The steppe and forest-steppe region of Ukraine was considered a "salt-starved region" and, therefore, it was inferred that the Eastern Carpathians were the main provider of salt for Cucuteni-Tripolye settlements, as well as for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic pastoralists inhabiting the northern coast of the Black Sea. Relying on this assumption, archeologists further conceived various models of dynamic material and cultural exchanges among the populations of the region. Our multidisciplinary approach points to a salt resource that was consistently overlooked by the salt archaeologists. We provide hydrogeological, historical, ethnological and climatic evidence that on the northern Black Sea, despite its often invoked low salinity in comparison with other inland seas, the phenomenon of natural crystallization of the salt, as well as the widespread exploitation and trade of salt taken from salt lake deposits were present since immemorial times to our present day in an almost unbroken sequence. The flourishing Cucuteni-Tripolye culture must have had therefore (at least) two salt bases -first, the salt extraction lakes from the Northern Black Sea (which had a spectacular rate of production), and, secondly, the (regionally important) salt springs of Moldavia -, which between them constituted a territory fully provided with salt.