Salt road in the context of "Transhumance"

International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories because there is a need or want of goods or services.

In most countries, such trade represents a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). While international trade has existed throughout history (for example Uttarapatha, Silk Road, Amber Road, salt roads), its economic, social, and political importance has been on the rise in recent centuries.

Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as rock salt or halite. Salt is essential for life in general (being the source of the essential dietary minerals sodium and chlorine), and saltiness is one of the basic human tastes. Salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous food seasonings, and is known to uniformly improve the taste perception of food. Salting, brining, and pickling are ancient and important methods of food preservation.

Some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6000 BC, when people living in the area of present-day Romania boiled spring water to extract salts; a salt works in China dates to approximately the same period. Salt was prized by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Hittites, Egyptians, and Indians. Salt became an important article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads, and across the Sahara on camel caravans. The scarcity and universal need for salt have led nations to go to war over it and use it to raise tax revenues, for instance triggering the El Paso Salt War which took place in El Paso in the late 1860s. Salt is used in religious ceremonies and has other cultural and traditional significance.

The Forest of Arden is a territory and cultural reference point in the English West Midlands, that in antiquity and into the Early Modern Period covered much of that district: 'This great forest once extended across a wide band of Middle England, as far as the River Trent in the north and the River Severn in the south'. It thus included much of Warwickshire, and parts of Shropshire, Staffordshire, the West Midlands, and Worcestershire. It is associated with William Shakespeare and is the setting of some of his dramas. The 'forest' did not necessarily denote continuous woodland, "but a large predominantly wooded area with many clearings and areas of cultivation''.

The Forest of Arden area may be said to fall within the Roman roads which bounded the territory within: in the east by Icknield Street, in the south by the Salt Road (the modern Alcester to Stratford Road), in the south east by the Fosse Way, and in the north and west by Watling Street. The Gough Map shows this traditional extent of the forest.