A team of anthropologists from the University of Louisiana, led by Heather McKillop, found a tool made of high-quality translucent jadeite with an intact rosewood handle in an ancient Maya salt pan in Belize (now submerged due to rising sea levels).
The discovery of these high-quality materials - jadeite and rosewood - used as tools, demonstrates that salt workers played an important role in the Classic Maya market economy more than 1,000 years ago.
According to McKillop Salineros were successful entrepreneurs who managed to obtain high-quality tools for their trade through the production and distribution of a basic biological necessity:salt. There was a demand for salt for the Mayan diet. We have found that it was also a storable form of wealth and an important preservative for fish and meat .
Jadeite is a hard rock that varies from translucent to opaque. During the Classic Period from 300-900 AD, high quality translucent jadeite was typically reserved for unique and elaborate jadeite plaques, figurines, and earrings for royalty and other elites. For this reason, the finding of the jadeite tool in the ancient salt pan at Ek Way Nal, in southern Belize, is unusual.
This place is part of a network of 110 ancient sites related to the production and work of salt that covers an area of almost 8 square kilometers discovered by McKillop in 2004.
These sites are located in a saltwater lagoon surrounded by mangrove forests. Rising sea levels have completely submerged them under water, and the mangrove-soaked soil, or peat, preserves the wood, which would normally decompose in the Central American rainforest.
Analysis of the wood structure shows that the handle is made from Honduran rosewood. The jadeite gouge was analyzed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to determine the object's chemical composition and mineral phases. This study was published in the journal Antiquity last month.
Although the jadeite tool was probably not used on wood or hard materials, it could have been used in other activities on the salt pans, such as scraping salt, cutting and scraping fish or meat, or cleaning gourds.