Marine salt production in the Roman world: The salinae and their ownership

While we have abundant archaeological evidence for the salting establishments that once operated in the Roman world salting fish (and meat), archaeological evidence for salt works is rarer; yet in antiquity salt was essential not only in food preservation but in many other production processes. The few known cases of Roman salt works investigated archaeologically (e.g., those at O Areal near Vigo or at Caunos in Turkey) offer some information on the physical infrastructure for salt production. However, the issue of ownership – whether marine salt works in the late republican and imperial periods were always a state monopoly – remains unclear. This article presents the available archaeological evidence for Roman marine salt works and argues that in the late Republic and during the first two centuries of the Empire state ownership was not the norm for marine salt pans, but rather the exception. The capillary diffusion of fish-salting workshops is a good indicator that salt could be freely acquired in the quantities needed for this activity, presumably at a fair price. This is in stark contrast compared to later historical period when salt was certainly a state monopoly.