Exploring Ancient Salt Production Sites in China

Exploring Ancient Salt Production Sites in China
by Lothar von Falkenhausen

Joint Project by UCLA and Peking University traces the origins of this early commodity

The author standing next to well 2 at Yaogengcun, Baiyunxiang Township>>

Salt (NaCl) has been in great demand at least since Neolithic times when humans took up a plant–based diet. Whether we actually have a physical need for an added complement of salt is still disputed; many nutritionists believe there is already enough salt in the food we eat. Still, there is no doubt that humans crave salt to make their food more tasty and for a host of other uses such as preserving food, tenderizing meat, and tanning leather. Since salt resources that could be exploited with premodern technology are very unevenly distributed, salt was important early on as a commodity.

There is extensive textual documentation on salt manufacture in ancient China, with reliable records going back to the fourth century bc. At that time, the salt industry was already well developed, and its origins certainly go back to much earlier times. Until very recently, though, salt making in China had never been addressed through archaeological research, in marked contrast to the West, where exploration of salt–producing sites has been an important topic for over two hundred years. In Europe, for instance, extensive work has been done on coastal salines in England and France and on inland salt-production sites in Lorraine (eastern France), central Germany, and, perhaps most famously, Austria, where extensive Late Bronze Age saltworks at Hallstatt have given their name to an important archaeological period. Closer to China, a great deal of excavation of salt-making workshops has taken place along the coasts of Japan. Reconstruction of prehistoric salt-making techniques has been facilitated by anthropological fieldwork in such areas as New Guinea and Africa (Mali, Niger, Chad), where salt was still manufactured by traditional pottery–using technologies until very recently.

To trace the origins of industrial salt making in China and explore its cultural, economic, and environmental ramifications, an project was initiated this year between UCLA and Peking University, as well as several institutions in Sichuan. The project, headed by Professors Li Shuicheng and Sun Hua at Peking University and myself, is focused on inland salt–producing areas in the Sichuan Basin and adjacent areas, where brine springs rise from salt layers formed during the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, now some 500 m below the surface. These salt resources have been exploited throughout history, and modern salt factories are still active in several places, even though about 90 percent of the salt now consumed in China comes from the coast. During the project’s four–week preliminary season, in March 1999, participants visited a number of places of interest for future fieldwork. The earliest in date were several multiperiod stratified sites that had been discovered by Peking University archaeologists in the course of fieldwork in the Ganjing River valley at Zhong Xian (Chongqing Municipality). These sites comprise extremely dense accumulations of potsherds—in some cases, nothing but potsherds for several meters. They are obviously not ordinary habitation sites but must be linked to economic activity of some kind; the proximity of salt wells that were still exploited until about twenty years ago strongly suggests a linkage to salt production. Even though the time–depth of these remains has not yet been determined with certainty, they must precede the adoption of the iron brine–boiling pans that have been in use throughout recorded history. The details of the production technique involved as well as the scale of salt production and its local cultural impact remain to be investigated. This will be the agenda for future field seasons.

Project members at the Baiheliang site, Fuling District, Chongqing. From left to right, Rong Yuanda, Li Xiaobo, Chen Pochan, Prof. Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gwen Bennett, Prof. Ian Brown, Zhang Wuyi (front), Rowan Flad, (back), unidentified member of Fuling District Bureau of Cultural Relics Preservation; Huang Xiaofeng (front), Prof. Li Shuicheng (back), and Ms. Huang.

Project participants also visited a number of sites where salt had been produced during historical times—in some cases, until very recently. The high point of the journey was the visit to a factory near the city of Zigong that still produces salt by traditional methods. Zigong, the“salt capital” of Sichuan province, has a fascinating museum devoted to the history of the salt industry, and various parts of early factories are now preserved as industrial monuments. The advanced brine well–drilling techniques developed here since circa ad 1000 are among the great achievements of the history of technology in China. The salt–making technique observed at the still-operating factory was virtually identical in its basic principles to that reflected by the earliest remaining depictions of saltworks from the second century AD. Such a technique can also be reconstructed for some Late Medieval (eighth to fourteenth century) saltworks at Pujiang, to the west of Chengdu, visited by project members.

At the largest site, the Chengdu Municipal Archaeological Team had conducted preliminary excavations the previous year. Only an enormous refuse heap, up to 14 m high and over 180 m long, now remains visible of the workshop itself. A short distance upstream, two of the ancient brine wells are still well preserved, as are numerous postholes that once supported scaffolding for bamboo pipes which conducted brine to the workshop. Fuel came from coal mines still visible nearby. Whether prehistoric artifacts found in the area are related to early salt exploitation still remains to be investigated. Traces of religious worship connected with salt production (sometimes with telltale inscriptions) were consistently found in the sites visited, and there is a great deal of salt–related folklore. Many prosperous small towns developed in the vicinity of brine springs during recent centuries that may have forerunners in earlier times. Future seasons of the project will include case studies to trace the development of salt production in particular localities. The project’s first full season of excavations, funded by a grant from the Henry T. Luce Foundation, begins in November 1999.

Lothar von Falkenhausen is Professor in the Department of Art History and is Director of the East Asia Laboratory.