BU Research Blog

BU’s ECOSAL Team recently visited Northern Ireland to investigate the coastal salt working site at Ballycastle, Co Antrim. ECOSAL is a multi-national EU-funded project that is recording the archaeological evidence for salt working around the Atlantic Coast of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal. It is also recording the ecology and biodiversity of these sites, many of them located in fragile environments such as lagoons. Key sites will be included on a European Salt Route, linking sites from all four countries while telling the story of salt production, the uses of salt, its economic history, etc.

The photo shows that it’s not all sunshine and celebrity media events, but on this occasion we found some excellent evidence for the 17^th to 19^th century salt-workings at Ballycastle, a once thriving industry now completely gone.

From left to right in the photo: David Cranstone, Wes Forsythe, Mark Brisbane, Michael Fradley and Danny McGill.

You can find out more about ECOSAL at our BU website: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/applied-sciences/research/ecosal-atlantis/index.html