Appendix 3.0.A Imagery of European Salt-Making

These pictures aim to show the similarities and differences in known areas of saltmaking in mainland Europe, with emphasis on the pond layouts and the patterns produced within them by the solids gathering as evaporation takes place.

With the GE imagery, it is recommended that the original is consulted at varying levels of zoom and using also the time-depth facility where this is available.

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Figure 3.0.A.1: Caligari, Sicily, 39°N. Compare the with SEL imagery that suggestes a 'quited' pattern of small enclosures. There are larger ponds here as well, tending to be oblong rather than square in shape.

GE 2004. Image © Terrametrics, Google and Getmapping plc 2013.

Figure 3.0.A.2: Cervia, near Ravenna, Italy, 44°N. In what are presumably disused ponds, the outlines of banks are still visible and in the top left corner, there are irregular lines of former heaps of salt. In some of the light-coloured enclosures, circular gatherings of salt can be seen.

GE 2003. Image © Terrametrics, Google and Getmapping plc 2013.

Figure 3.0.A.3: Dives valley, near Cobourg, Normandy, 49°N. An area of known medieval saltmaking. Agriculture has taken over the reclaimed lands and the field shapes are more like the greva zones of SEL than the trickle-down pond systems further south in Europe.

GE 2005. Image © Terrametrics, Google and Getmapping plc 2013.

Figure 3.0.A.4: Piran, Slovenia, 45°N. Close association of ponds of different sizes. Notable gatherings (darker colours) and some obvious conical 'pimples'.

GE 2008. Image © Terrametrics, Google and Getmapping plc 2013.

Figure 3.0.A.5: Ground-level photographs of salt-works in Guérande, Loire-Atlantiqué (47°N) and in Malta (35°N). The thickness of the pond walls in evident in both cases, though in the French example they are built up and on Malta carved from the limestone. A large conical heap of salt is visible in the upper picture.

Figure 3.0.A.6: Île de Ré, Charente Maritime, 46°N. An unusual layout, with a central pond apparently feeding evaporation ponds on either side. An irregular line of heaps appears to separate ponds on two different axes towards the north side of the saltmaking area.

Image © Terrametrics, Google and Getmapping plc 2013.

Figure 3.0.A.7: Evaporation of salt in small beakers placed on a mesh of dried and 'cooked' earth which are placed above the fires. A sort of post-Roman 'briquetage' is presumably found on sites that used this technique.

J-F Berger, Une Histoire du Sel, Fribourg (Suisse) Office du Livre S.A. 1982, Fig 174.

Figure 3.0.A.8: Ston, Croatia, 42°N. A modernised plant with only indistinct gatherings of solids in the smaller ponds. The 'last' line of ponds are dry and the markings suggest tht the salt is raked into lines at some point in the harvesting.

Figure 3.0.A.9: Trapani, Sicily, 38°N. A modern plant with different sizes of ponds, though a basic division into large and small is apparent as in so many of these installations. Raking of salt into lines can be seen and seems to be characteristic of whichever pond style represents the terminal phase of evaporation. The N - S run of ponds east of the processing plant has an unusual signature, some of which seems to be composed of small circular features with pimples.