Briquetage

Often, the bulk of the water would be allowed to evaporate in salterns before the concentrated brine was transferred to a smaller briquetage vessel for final reduction.

Once only salt was left, the briquetage vessels would have to be broken to remove the valuable commodity for trade.

[3] On the European continent, briquetage often took a columnar form which would have too small dimples on each end where the crystallised salt would collect.

Saltworking sites contain large quantities of the orange/red material and in Essex the mounds of briquetage are known as Red Hills.

A recent discovery at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamt County, Romania, indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage to extract the salt as far back as 6050 BC, making it perhaps the oldest saltworks in history.