Meridians of Salt Global Perspectives on Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology

Paul N. Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Anthropology specializing in the Indigenous history of the American Southeast. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in 2008, and in 2016, he finished his Ph.D. at the University of Alabama. His dissertation, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, examined the role of salt production and trade in pre-Colonial and early Colonial northwestern Louisiana.  Upon receiving his Ph.D., he accepted a tenure-track position at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). Here, he continues his research on Indigenous salt production and trade while leading MTSU’s annual summer archaeological field school. His work and the work of his students is routinely presented at local, regional, national, and international conferences, and in 2018 he served on the Scientific Committee for the 3rd International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. In 2021, he published a co-edited volume entitled Salt in Eastern North American and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology with Ashley A. Dumas at the University of West Alabama. He has also authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and book chapters on the archaeology and anthropology of salt.

Ashley A. Dumas is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of West Alabama, where she specializes in the late precontact and colonial eras of Southeastern North America. She has published and presented numerous studies on the role of salt in Indigenous and settler society, including Salt in Eastern North American and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology, co-edited with Paul N. Eubanks.

Heather McKillop is the Thomas and Lillian Landrum Alumni Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University. She earned her honors B.Sc. and M.A. in Anthropology at Trent University, Canada, and her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Recent academic awards include Trent University Distinguished Alumna (2024), LSU Research Master (2021), LSU Honors College Teaching Award (2019), and Alumni Professorship (2015). She teaches courses in archaeology and 3D digital imaging. She organized the 4th International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt at Louisiana State University in 2022, along with Ashley Dumas and Rachel Watson. Since the 2004 discovery of wooden buildings preserved below the sea floor in Belize, her research has focused on these wooden structures, which included salt kitchens and residences, with funding from the National Science Foundation. Her current research is with co-PI E. Cory Sills on surplus household production of salt. She has published over 100 articles in journals and edited volumes, as well as five books: Maya Salt Works (2019), In Search of Maya Sea Traders (2005), The Ancient Maya (2004), Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya (2002),  Pre-Columbian Jade and Stone Carvings from Costa Rica (2002), and Coastal Maya Trade (1989, with co-editor Paul F. Healy).

Marius Alexianu is a senior researcher at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania. He led three research projects (2007–2019) on the ethnoarchaeology of salt in Romania. He is the first editor of three volumes on the archaeology and anthropology of salt. He published the first study on the concept of the anthropology of salt and is the author of the chapter "Ethnoarchaeology of Salt in Romania," published in the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, edited by Claire Smith (2nd ed., 2020). He co-edited, with Roxana-Gabriela Curcă, Olivier Weller, and Ashley A. Dumas, the volume Mirrors of Salt: Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt (2023).