Roman Salt Mining

Roman occupied areas such as Cardona ,Spain , Chester England, and Tuda, Romania were centers of mined salt for centuries, however records of any direct mining by Rome occurring is limited at best. Primarily due to any signs of mining having been erased by their continuous use.

According to Aulus Gellius, Cato described one of the most important salt mines in the world, the Cardona mine, in the second century as “A great mountain of pure salt that grows as it is extracted.” It does not tell us however how the salt was extracted.

What we do have is salt pans found locally to these mines that appear to have been used to harvest the highly concentrated springs that formed as ground water absorbed the halite over time or to melt down the halite (rock salt) using fresh water pumped across the halite and reprocess it with proteins to remove any impurities. This does not exclude mining and grinding down the rock however,  but due to scarce arechological evidence we do not truly know if this was done.