For nearly a thousand years salt has been made at Kibiro on the Ugandan shore of Lake Albert, close to the Equator in the Western Rift Valley. The product was - and still is - obtained by women who exploit the salt-rich soil near a hot spring and employed an original technique of preparing and 'recycling' this soil in what are aptly called 'salt-gardens'. This Kibiro salt supplied the land known as Bunyoro: it was an important economic resourse for the rulers of that kingdom, once the most powerful in this interlacustrine region of East Africa.
Graham Connah's archaeological investigations at Kibiro in 1989 and 1990, combined with an ethnographic and historical study of the Kibiro village and the neighbouring district, provide a perspective of eight centuries of the local industry and trade. The pottery sequence, established through detailed analysis of the stratified finds, will be an essential reference tool for further research in the region.