  Relativistic heavy-ion collisions lead to a final state which has a higher
degree of strangeness saturation than those of elementary collisions. A
systematic analysis of this phenomenon, based on the strangeness saturation
factor, is made for C+C, Si+Si and Pb+Pb collisions at the CERN SPS collider
and for Au+Au collisions at RHIC energies. Strangeness saturation is shown to
increase with the number of participants within a colliding system, at both
CERN SPS and RHIC energies. The saturation observed in central collisions of
lighter nuclei deviates from that seen in peripheral collisions of heavier
nuclei with an equivalent participant number, which could be due to the
difference in nuclear density.
