Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
“Drinking beer in a blissful mood. Drinking liquor feeling exhilarated.” This is one of the most well-known stanzas in the archaeology of beer, drawn from a Sumerian tavern song of the fourth millennium BCE in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of beer . . . or was it? Archaeological evidence of beer and brewing has been recovered from civilizations across the ancient world and over the course of millennia. From the corn-based chicha of the Wari and Inka Empires of South America, to the rice-based beers of Neolithic China, to Viking-era grogs across western Europe, as well as the early beers and eventual breweries of both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, beer is far from the monolithic fermented beverage often imagined today. Beer has been brewed as both a daily household beverage and as a large-scale festive brew. It has served as payment for labor, as well as an intercessor between people and deities. Beer is deeply ancient, vastly diverse, and a fascinating entry point into understandings of the ancient people who brewed and consumed this beverage. Through this session we explore the archaeological evidence of ancient beers and their brewers from a variety of ancient global contexts.
Other Keywords
Subsistence and Foodways •
Neolithic •
Ethnoarchaeology •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Residue Analysis •
Experimental Archaeology •
Paleoethnobotany •
Ceramic Analysis •
Household Archaeology •
Historic •
Mortuary archaeology
Geographic Keywords
Asia (Continent) •
State of Eritrea (Country) •
Republic of Yemen (Country) •
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Country) •
Republic of Iraq (Country) •
State of Israel (Country) •
Lebanese Republic (Country) •
Syrian Arab Republic (Country) •
West Bank (Country) •
Republic of Cyprus (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Alcohol, Rituals, and Spirits at the Late Shang Center: Residue Analysis of Ceramic Vessels in Anyang (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Bronze Age of China, alcohol practice was an integral part of rituals and the spiritual world as a social agent in hierarchical societies. Multiple types of alcoholic beverages appeared in the earliest writings of the late Shang dynasty some 3,200 years ago. However, little research has been done to characterize how...
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Beer and the Politics of Affect in Mesopotamia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many early states were deeply invested in alcoholic beverages. In focusing on the political instrumentality of these beverages, however, archaeologists have often lost sight of what makes them such an effective tool of statecraft. People seek out alcoholic beverages because of their affective power, their ability to...
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Beer, Pots, and Caste: A Tale of Two Sites in the Gamo Highlands of Southwestern Ethiopia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beer is an essential culinary food for many African societies today and in the past for daily meals, economic compensation, and ritual feasting. This paper focuses on the ethnoarchaeology and archaeology in the Gamo region of southwest Ethiopia located on the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. Today, a unique...
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Drinking the Diaspora: An Archaeological Investigation into the Maintenance of Traditional Tigrayan Brewing Practices by Emigrant Ethiopians in British Columbia, Canada (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Beer: that malty, effervescent drink has been brewing alongside humanity since before written records. Humans today are just as interested in making and consuming beer as they have been in the ancient past. For some people today, beer can serve the same function as it has in the past, being an extra source of calories and...
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In the Reed Buckets There Is Sweet Beer: An Archaeology of Beer, Brewing, and Women in Mesopotamia (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates,” the filtered beer pours into collection vats and from there into serving jars and beakers for the happy drinkers. Or so the Hymn to Ninkasi suggests. By the time the poet impressed those words into clay, beer had been brewed for generations with the practiced gestures and...
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Serving Alcoholic Beverages to the Ancestors in Neolithic China (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. China has a long history of alcoholic production and consumption, and the earliest evidence of fermented beverages has been recovered from pottery vessels about 9,000 years ago. Many drinking vessels have been found in mortuary contexts, suggesting that alcohol was closely related to ancestral worship ritual. In this talk I...
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A Symbiotic Relationship between People, Plants, and Microbes: A Case Study on the Fermented Beverages from the Chahekou Site in North China during the Middle Neolithic Period (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Drinking Beer in a Blissful Mood: A Global Archaeology of Beer" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The making of fermented beverages is a complex process through the interaction among people, plants, and microorganisms, among other abiotic factors. In this process, microbes, as the primary catalyst, get all the agents gradually entangled in the fermentation process. During the middle Neolithic, there was an evident...