A Millennium of Salt Production in Southwest Alabama

Title

A Millennium of Salt Production in Southwest Alabama

Creator

Ashley A. Dumas See all items with this value

Date

2021

Bibliographic Citation

Dumas, Ashley A. 2021. A Millennium of Salt Production in Southwest Alabama. In Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology, ed. A. A. Dumas and P. N. Eubanks, pp. 22-36. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

annotates

• Discussion of Middle and Late Mississippian salt making, and particularly cane-basket molded salt pans versus fabric impressed pans from the preceding phases.
• Interprets as possibility for Pensacola phase control of salt production and distribution centered around Bottle Creek.
• Dumas (2021:32) discusses the historical record which documents the 1702 visit by Charles Levasseur to a Tomé village where he observed them making salt, and trading it with others, including the Choctaw “who are a seven days’ journey distant by land.” Additional mentions of Choctaw producing salt during the eighteenth century from historical documents. Dumas speculates that the location of this Tomé village is not necessarily known archaeologically, but that the Lower Salt Works site is a 15-mile canoe trip away.
• (Maureen Myers discusses the Choctaw fabrics and the role of salt in Mississippian crafting, although the information is pulled from Swanton in a later chapter of the volume.)

Subject

Alabama See all items with this value

Rivers See all items with this value

Coastal Plain See all items with this value

Salt See all items with this value

Tohomi (Tohome) See all items with this value

Kimmswick Fabric See all items with this value

Ceramics See all items with this value

Artifacts See all items with this value

Foodways See all items with this value

Town See all items with this value

Bottle Creek See all items with this value

Basket See all items with this value

Textile See all items with this value

Chahta (Choctaw) See all items with this value

Temporal Coverage

Postcontact See all items with this value

18th Century See all items with this value

Mississippian See all items with this value