Deep within the Austrian Alps, beneath the small town of Hallstatt, salt has preserved for millennia not only a mineral, but also the everyday traces of those who extracted it. Recent excavations have revealed an extensive Iron Age complex stretching for about 300 metres, where fragments of clothing, wooden tool handles, food remains and even human excrement have survived in waste layers up to nine metres thick.
Salt mining here began about 7300 years ago, in the Neolithic, when people used antler picks and stone tools. By 1200 BCE, production had reached industrial scale — roughly one and a half tonnes per day. Despite collapses, the miners returned and restored the workings, adapting to the geology of the mountain. In 2022, drilling made it possible to discover untouched chambers up to 25 wide and about 20 metres high, filled with compacted waste.
Salt creates special conditions: the high concentration of the mineral, a constant temperature of about eight degrees and the absence of air slow the decomposition of organic matter. As a result, the "pagan stone" — as archaeologists call these layers — has preserved textiles, leather goods, ropes made of plant fibres and charred pine splinters that served as lighting. Researchers note the evolution of tools: Iron Age handles differ from earlier standardised forms.
Of particular interest are the biological traces. Fragments of DNA from the workers themselves and from the foods they consumed may survive in the excrement and food remains. This opens up the possibility of reconstructing the diet, health and even the origins of the people who laboured underground. Such finds complement the picture usually provided only by stone or metal artefacts.
Hallstatt is already known for the "man in salt" — the body of a miner discovered in 1734 and dated to the Iron Age. The new data show that the miners did not merely extract a resource, but also adapted technologies, reworked broken tools and maintained a complex organisation of labour. Here salt acts not only as a commodity, but also as a natural preservative that turns waste into an archive of everyday life.
The results were presented in September 2026 at the "Archaeology in the Mountains" conference. Scientists from the Natural History Museum in Vienna are continuing their work, including the restoration of later galleries. Such discoveries remind us how fragile and at the same time how enduring the traces of human activity are under extreme conditions.
The study of such finds shows that even the routine labour of ancient people leaves a detailed trace that allows us to better understand the technologies and everyday life of past eras.
