DE LA PLATA AL PLATO: Etnoarqueología de la Producción salinera en el Valle de El Salado, San Luis Potosí-Zacatecas

Salt is an indispensable element for human and animal life, as well as for the present in about 16.000 processes in which it is used, for that reason, in antiquity it was cause for wars, blockades and dominance of certain groups or empires towards others in all over the world. The El Salado Valley, located between the states of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí, contains more than 45 salt lakes, some of which were possibly exploited from pre-Hispanic times to the present day. Because these salinas are located in the territories of the so-called "chichimec" indians groups, so misunderstood historically and archaeologically, it was believed that these never took advantage of the salt produced in these salt flats, notwithstanding the above, following the first ethnoarchaeological study of the Salt production in the region that produced the most salt quantity in the whole America, it was possible to "rescue" and record the methods, techniques and assemblage used by the last salineros of the El Salado Valley for salt production, some of which surprisingly presents a cultural survival that originate in the time of the Spanish contact (although possibly previous to this one), as well as of the XVI, XIX and XX centuries.