Densificaiton of porous aggregates is an important geophysical process. Salt is a convenient material to use in studying time-dependent densification because extensive studies have been made of the creep behavior of intact salt, and its relatively low melting point enhances the effects of temperature at easily attained laboratory conditions. To obtain data on instantaneous and time-dependent consolidation of granular salt, we measured the consolidation for times up to 400,000 s at temperatures from 21¿ to 100 ¿C and hydrostatic pressures from 1.7 to 21 MPa. All tests were done under hydrostatic loading and nominally dry conditions. The only water present was the ~02% water content of the salt. A model of the isostatic hot-pressing process was used to describe the data, using the known creep behavior of intact salt for input. When brittle phenomena such as particle rearrangement and fracturing were neglected, the model successfully predicted late-stage consolidation rates, but underpredicted the absolute densities attained in the tests. After a term was added to the model to account for brittle consolidation, the model predicted most of the observed behavior. The model makes specific predictions regarding the dependence of the conslidation rate on temperature and pressure, and these predictions are testable in the laboratory. Most importantly, the model predicts the conslidation behavior in terms of creep mechanism known to operate in intact rock salt both in the laboratory and under geological conditions. Thus the model may be credibly etrapolated to physcial conditions and long time spans beyond laboraotry test capilities. ¿American Geophysical Union 1990