A 5,500-year-old Salt Mine in Azerbaijan is Found
by A team of archaeologists from the CNRS has just proved that the salt deposits of Duzdagi were already used 5500 years ago. It is therefore the oldest salt mine known.
The mine is located in the valley of the Arax, Azerbaijan (photo, Séverine Sanz, CNRS). Archaeologists Laboratory Archeorient after consuites excavations in 2008 and 2009 in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, have discovered that it was the site of an intensive production of rock salt – deposits formed by evaporation of salt water – there are at least 5500 years. Activity conducted by the civilizations that have formed there over 6000 years in the Caucasus.
If the economic and symbolic importance of salt in the ancient and medieval world is well known, his place in the early agrarian civilizations and societies protohistoric is less so.
The salt may be derived from the extraction of rock salt or salt harvest in the dry salt flats. Prehistoric tools (Catherine Marro CNRS) In the Caucasus, the first traces of intensive exploitation of rock salt occur precisely when the protohistoric societies undergoing profound changes in both economic and technological development in relation to the first metallurgy copper.
To understand these interactions, Catherine Marro, a researcher at the CNRS explores the past ten years the basin of the Aras (Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan). The archaeologists were especially interested in the salt mine Duzdagi (word meaning mountain of salt in Azeri)) along the ancient Silk Road leading from medieval Tabriz (northwest of Iran) in Constantinople.
So far the earliest evidence of exploitation of the deposit still in business dating back to the second millennium BC. This dating was based on the accidental discovery in the 70’s, an old collapsed gallery containing the bones of four individuals buried with their tools.
In 2008, the team led by Catherine Marro and Veli Bakhshaliyev began a systematic exploration of the mine. She then identified a large number of remains (tools (photo Catherine Marro)), ceramics …), the oldest of which date back 6,500 years. An exceptional discovery for this age.
In the fourth millennium BC, the operation becomes intense, as suggested by the abundance of galleries old entries (Séverine Sanz CNRS) dated Bronze Age remains. Hundreds of peaks and stone hammers were found near the entrances of tunnels collapsed. Remnants dated by the presence of potsherds for farming called “Kuro-Araks”. Spatial and temporal distribution was analyzed using a geographic information system, combining satellite images (SPOT 5), photographs taken at the kite and the location of artifacts by DGPS, GPS kind of improvement. (Photo galleries of old entries, taken from a kite).
This suggests that the intensive extraction of salt Duzdagi was not reserved for the use of small local communities living in isolation. It was probably distributed in an economic framework that is currently unknown, to more distant destinations. Finally, it appears that this salt was not available to all communities in the valley of the Arax. Operation appears to have been the prerogative of certain dominant groups from the fifth millennium BC. These studies raise many questions: who and what was for the salt on the 5th and 4th millennia BC, how were organized communities that exploited the deposits, which were the political and economic ties between the different regional sites (villages , workshops, mines), etc. … Excavations are planned that could provide answers to these questions.
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