TRACE ELEMENT CHEMISTRY OF SALT SOURCES AND THEIR RELATION TO ANCIENT MAYAN SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTHERN MEXICO AND GUATEMALA

The use of salt and the access to salt sources has been an extremely important aspect of understanding the health, the mobility, and connectivity of Maya populations of Southern Mexico and northern Central America. Due to the high altitude and inland locations of many settlements and the relative scarcity of meat in the traditional diet, salt was a necessary but difficult to acquire nutritional supplement. In several regions, salt springs can be found flowing from uplifted sedimentary rocks in the region containing salts representing past ocean chemistry result in differing trace element chemistry than modern created salt in the environments near the ocean. Using differences in trace element chemistry, assessing regional geography, and anomalies in bone chemistry from previous work by Friewald, et al., we seek to provide a clearer relationship and understanding of where salt was accessed for diets and the relationships between various Mayan settlements. Samples were collected from several salt water springs in the region and solid salt samples were collected from geologic deposits and modern Mayan villages where salt processing from the springs is still being done. Using Inductively Couple Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy, we analyzed these samples for trace element chemistry of metals and metalloids and made comparative analysis between the brine and solid solutions to shed light on plausible relationships between the two.