*** I will come add pictures to this when I get back… it’s a little too laborious while I’m traveling and only using an iPad to write this ***
The 5th International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt convenes this week at the University of Rzeszow, in Poland. We were fortunate to have a paper be accepted for presentation there, so I am in Poland at the moment preparing to give the paper tomorrow.
As one does not get to Europe with any regularity, this was an opportunity to visit a small set of heritage sites that are germane to various aspects of the work we do in southwest Arkansas. This post deals with the first stop, which lies alongside a lake in the Austrian Alps. It is the Saltzkammergut, a salt-producing region centered on the town of Hallstatt. I spent Saturday touring the salt-related heritage sites there.
Hallstatt is remarkable in that it claims to have the world’s oldest salt mine, dating back to 7,000 years ago. It’s also remarkable in that salt is still mined there. Basically, if you go back 250 million years, continental drift split off a part of the ocean that eventually evaporated into a massive salt deposit that was then folded up into a discrete deposit up in the Alps through plate tectonics, with the African continent pushing northwards.
The human use of that deposit is told significantly through two institutions, Saltzwelten Hallstatt (the Salt Museum) and the Weltebe Museum (World Heritage Museum). The first involves going into the mine, entering via a shaft started in the early 1700s, then traveling through several kilometers on three different levels (“horizons”) within the mine. You can see there the marks of miners’ picks and other tools made hundreds of years ago, see the process by which water is injected into salt deposits to produce brine that is then pumped out to the local plant for dehydration into tradeable salt. In the process, tour groups move between levels using the old wooden slides that miners used to take to move quickly and safely (well, more safely than climbing down a slanted hallway in the dark). If that sounds like fun… that’s because it is. It’s a literal rush.
In one of the old galaries, the tour shares a movie suggesting how mining began there around 5,000 BC. Like we see with our work at Nakuukuwidish and other salt sites in North America, the belief is that hunters at the time observed that local deer and other game species made a point of coming to the waters there to drink and to lick the ground. After testing the waters and finding them salty, they eventually figured out a way of gathering and reducing that brine into salt for trading and local consumption. There is also a 3,000 year old staircase that was uncovered by miners, as well as numerous pieces of clothing and equipment preserved by the salt conditions inside the mine.
Hallstatt is also remarkable in the annals of archaeology in that it was one of the first major excavations in systematic archeology, which gave rise to the definition of the “Hallstatt Culture,” one of Europe’s deep history. A lot of that comes from the Hallstatt Necropolis, an ancient burial ground that was the subject of those early excavations. The route to the mine at the Salt Museum goes past the site where those excavations took place (including a permanent display of one of the burials). More of the finds are presented at the World Heritage Museum, which contains an array of the metal and ceramic items excavated back in the 19th century.
There are a few things that stand out as initial reactions to this visit. First, both Hallstatt and the Caddo/Settler salt making sites we have been working on in Arkansas draw on salt deposits formed as evaporite strata, where seawater under proper conditions evaporates away, leaving behind the salt, which gets compressed into solid deposit. Second, human use of these resources is likely based on observation of animal behavior, using insights from nature to develop cultural features. Third, both Hallstatt and Nakuukuwidish draw not on producing hard salt crystals but on brines that are then deliberately heated to turn them into salt. In Hallstatt, despite the fact that you can (I did) put your hand on the salt deposits, those deposits are now harvested by pumping water into the mine, letting the salt turn it into brine, then pumping the water out. That brine is then collected and heated to evaporate out the water… just like at Nakuukuwidish.
Incidentally, making brines like this removes sufficient salt from the deposit that caverns and voids open up within the mountain. Water collects in them and produced underground lakes with irregular islands in them. These areas look like they should have Gollum sitting on one of the island rocks, lovingly petting The One Ring.
It is interesting that both of these museums REALLY heavily employ archeological findings as a basis for building the interpretation they present to the public. The Salt Museum even has an archeological laboratory near the mine, and the excavations at the site still occur annually, giving the public a chance to see the excavations in progress. Archeology is so important to the telling of the story of Hallstatt that there is even a statue to Johann Georg Ramsauer, who directed excavations at the site beginning in 1846.
It has been massively important for me to see this place and to be able to compare what is here with what we see at Nakuukuwidish. The two places seem to have so much more in common than not, even given the differences in geography and time.
There is one other major attraction there not immediately tied to salt. It’s called the Hallstatt Charnel House and it is part of a centuries-old tradition where the deceased would be buried for maybe 15 years or so, then, in part because space for burials in the Alps is constrained, the bones would be exhumed and the skull decorated with the name of the individual, the birth and death dates, and other embellishments. You can see a grouping of several hundred, the most recent being that of a woman who passed away in 1983.
Side/additional notes:
- There is an Austrian soda called “Almdudler,” which is basically a limonade and is extremely tasty. It even comes in Haribo form.
- Navigating around Austria by train is remarkably straightforward. NGL, I’m a little jealous. It’s nice to travel and be able to read at the same time.
- I stayed in neighboring Obertraun because it was significantly cheaper (Hallstatt is definitely a tourist town and charges rates accordingly) and the local bakery is astoundingly good.
- So far, my biggest mistake of the trip was not bringing a power bank to recharge my mobile phone. Searching for signal in the Alps and in a literal mine over 200 meters below the surface kills battery life. When your train out of there at the end of the day involves digital tickets… it’s best not to have to sweat it out as much as I did.
