“Hector Neff’s offers a unique and compelling analysis of the links between environment, technology, and human adaptation over the course of millennia. He brings to bear important and detailed new information and synthesizes it with older work. His distinctive contribution is to analyze how pyrotechnology, the basis of both salt production and pottery, impacted the coastal environmental zone and how the interaction between fire and salt led to the development of Mesoamerica’s most enigmatic pottery, Plumbate.” - Michael W. Love, co-editor of Archaeology and Identity on the Pacific Coast and Southern Highlands of Mesoamerica