THE earliest salt-making site in the country has been found on the North-East coast.

The 6,000-year-old find on an east Cleveland clifftop could reshape our understanding of the Neolithic period as humans switched from being hunter-gathers to settled farmers, and may even change the way Teesside is viewed: previously, its only known contribution to culinary history was the parmo, but it may have been the centre of Stone Age gastronomy as it could have been the first place to use salt to flavour its food.

Archaeologist Steve Sherlock said the find at Street House, near Loftus, was of national significance, and added: “It is a truly spectacular find in our neck of the woods.

“This is older than Stonehenge!”

His findings appear in the June edition of Antiquity, a peer-reviewed academic publication which suggests that they have European importance.

The findings of three hearths, ceramic salt pans and a storage pit date from around 3,800BC – the previous earliest salt-making process was in Somerset and dated from 1,400BC.

Dr Sherlock said: “Here we have an industrial process: people going to the beach at Skinningrove, collecting the seawater and boiling it on the foreshore into a brine type soup and transporting it two miles up to Street House where it is finally evaporated in these pans and hearths.

“There’s collection, transport and manufacture – this is Cleveland’s first industry. It beats ICI by 6,000 years!”

The importance of salt was that it would be used to preserve meat. This encouraged people to end their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle and settle down and manage herds of cattle.

Evidence in the 750 shards of pottery found on the site suggest that the people’s diet was changing away from fish-based and onto beef.

“This is a period of intense social change, of the coming of agriculture, farming, crops and the domestication of animals,” said Dr Sherlock. “The salt enables them to keep meat, so you start raising cattle and managing the herd.

“With that you have changes in diet and lifestyle, for the flavouring of foods and for recipes.”

Archaeologists have been working at Street House for more than 40 years. The site had previously yielded up the bed burial of a Saxon princess from the 7th Century, a Roman villa from about AD370, and Teesside’s oldest house from about 3,600BC.

Salt in Stone Age time was highly prized and so the salt-makers and traders of Loftus were probably a wealthy community.

L More on this amazing find in Saturday’s Memories