Karin Maack (asker) Oct 12, 2019:

@ David Thanks for your comment. I am really glad that an English native speaker finds this kind of sentence unclear, too. I find things difficult to translate when it is not clear which refers to what. But perhaps the author actually didn't know either.

David Moore (X) Oct 12, 2019:

Hi Karin, I did post a comment on this yesterday, but some glitch occurred and it vanished. What I wrote was to the effect that I thought the writer had the "Bezugs" mixed up. I think it should have read "...salt-production pools for livestock, tended by **villagers.**. Even that doesn't make it clear whether it was the livestock or the pools which it was intended to convey was (or were) tended by the villagers, The writer could have added "which was" (for the livestock), or "which were" (for the pools), which would have made the meaning clear. If it was in fact both, there is such a word as "and", which would have made that clear too...