1If, as Claude Lévi Strauss pointed out in 1982 in Du miel aux cendres (From honey to ashes), “the Machiguenga, a Peruvian tribe living in the region of the Rio Madre de Dios, have a single word for sweet and salty”, salt and sugar have at times followed completely different trajectories, while in other periods they accompanied the same dishes simultaneously. Costly – their cost often increased by taxes, including the famous salt tax – difficult to procure, transported over long distances over land (sugar was first conveyed along the Silk Road) and by sea, when the “old colonies” (now French overseas territories or DOM) started producing cane sugar, these rare and expensive ingredients have become precious condiments, often, at least in the past, thought to possess healing powers and conferring prestige to the most sought-after tables.

2Then there is honey, presumed easily obtainable and used as a sweetener, but in fact quite often consumed on its own. Even today, colds are seen off by a good, sweet grog… its honey well known for its antiseptic and soothing qualities!

3This issue of Archéopages does of course not pretend to be a treatise on medical and culinary recipes of the Roman, medieval or modern past, as archaeological evidence is rarely forthcoming, almost never in France. Nevertheless, by scrutinising the texts and through patient experimental work, researchers have tried to plug the gaps and recover past practices and tastes, with sometimes most pleasant and sometimes most surprising results.

4On the other hand, archaeological evidence for salt and sugar production is plentiful. The data are enriched by Inrap’s interventions, whose public mission also requires it intervene in overseas territories, where, under appalling conditions – which will be discussed further at a colloquium organised by the museum of the Quai Branly in 2012 – molasses and sugar were produced right from the start of the colonial period.

5Of note is the fact that salt and sugar production has been a lucrative pursuit throughout time. Salt – essential to humans as well as to domestic animals – and sugar were precious commodities and could not be acquired just anywhere. Control over production and extraction areas, and over the exchange network have been a source of wealth for the elites who, in certain cases, have been able to secure political power through their economic prosperity. Thus at Marsal in the valley of the Seille staggering amounts of briquetage used for collecting brine salt an dating to the Celtic period let us expect that one day high status burial will be discovered, giving support to such a hypothesis.

6Apart from generating speculation on an Iron Age salt working oligarchy in Lorraine, the data shed light on production methods employed and on ancestral know-how. As is often the case, these practices can be better apprehended or corroborated by ethnological observations. It has therefore been important to include the testimony of one of the last salt-workers of Salins-les-Bains in the Jura; it documents the techniques employed for evaporating the brine in vast metal stoves and the hardships endured, but also all the know-how and experience which, through the precision of its actions, can, in optimal conditions, produce the best possible product.

7May this issue of Archéopages be a real “treat”; in French the word for treat, friandise, comes from the Latin frigere – i.e. to roast – and refers, as Furetière’s Dictionnaire Universel of 1690 indicates, to both sweet and savoury dishes: “Friandise refers not to food intake but to all things eaten purely for pleasure”

Sugar mold found during the excavation of the Joliette tunnel in Marseille, stamped with the monogram "B. F." (or possibly the incomplete "B. R."), where it was associated with 19th-century ceramics.

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 1,1M)

Photo: Véronique Abel, Inrap.