Patrick McGovern
University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology and Near East Section, Scientific Director, Adjunct Professor, and Consulting Scholar
Patrick E. McGovern is the Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, where he is also an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology.
His academic background combined the physical sciences, archaeology, and history-an A.B. in Chemistry from Cornell University, graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Archaeology and Literature from the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the past two decades, he has pioneered the exciting interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology which is yielding whole new chapters concerning our human ancestry, medical practice, and ancient cuisines and beverages.
He is the author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton U., 2003/2004), also translated into French and Italian. A new 2nd edition, with an Afterword bringing it up to date, was recently published in the Princeton Science Library.
Other alcoholic beverages, including grape wine, are dealt with in Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (U. California, 2009/2010), which follows human ingenuity in making fermented beverages before and after our ancestors came “out of Africa” 200,000 years ago and traveled around the world.
His latest book, Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-created), was published in June 2017 (WW Norton, New York). It tells the scientific, experimental, and personal backstories of how the Dogfish Head Brewery series of Ancient Ales and Spirits came about (nine re-created brews thus far). Ranging from galactic alcohol to the beginnings of life on earth to how our early ancestors reveled in extreme fermented beverages of every kind, including grape wine, the book lays the groundwork for how to go about bringing the past alive in as authentic a way as possible. It sheds new light on the earliest biotechnology of our innovative species. Dogfish Head, one of the fastest growing craft breweries in the U.S. Midas Touch was its first and premier Ancient Ale. It is its most awarded brew, and among the best-selling honey-based fermented beverages in the U.S.
Popularly, Dr. Pat is known as the “Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages.”
His personal website has pdf links to many other wine-related “Articles,” as well as the latest “News” of lectures, events, films, and stories in the popular and scientific press:
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/
Recently, he was lead author on a seminal paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: “Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus” (http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/48/E10309.full.pdf?with-ds=yes).
Phone: .215-898-1164
Address: homepage with pdf's of articles under "Books":
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/
Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project
and Adjunct Prof., Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104, U.S.A.
His academic background combined the physical sciences, archaeology, and history-an A.B. in Chemistry from Cornell University, graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Archaeology and Literature from the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the past two decades, he has pioneered the exciting interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology which is yielding whole new chapters concerning our human ancestry, medical practice, and ancient cuisines and beverages.
He is the author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton U., 2003/2004), also translated into French and Italian. A new 2nd edition, with an Afterword bringing it up to date, was recently published in the Princeton Science Library.
Other alcoholic beverages, including grape wine, are dealt with in Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (U. California, 2009/2010), which follows human ingenuity in making fermented beverages before and after our ancestors came “out of Africa” 200,000 years ago and traveled around the world.
His latest book, Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-created), was published in June 2017 (WW Norton, New York). It tells the scientific, experimental, and personal backstories of how the Dogfish Head Brewery series of Ancient Ales and Spirits came about (nine re-created brews thus far). Ranging from galactic alcohol to the beginnings of life on earth to how our early ancestors reveled in extreme fermented beverages of every kind, including grape wine, the book lays the groundwork for how to go about bringing the past alive in as authentic a way as possible. It sheds new light on the earliest biotechnology of our innovative species. Dogfish Head, one of the fastest growing craft breweries in the U.S. Midas Touch was its first and premier Ancient Ale. It is its most awarded brew, and among the best-selling honey-based fermented beverages in the U.S.
Popularly, Dr. Pat is known as the “Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages.”
His personal website has pdf links to many other wine-related “Articles,” as well as the latest “News” of lectures, events, films, and stories in the popular and scientific press:
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/
Recently, he was lead author on a seminal paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: “Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus” (http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/48/E10309.full.pdf?with-ds=yes).
Phone: .215-898-1164
Address: homepage with pdf's of articles under "Books":
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/
Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project
and Adjunct Prof., Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104, U.S.A.
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Books by Patrick McGovern
A broader goal of the Afterword is to elucidate how best to integrate scientific data and hypotheses with archaeological, textual, and other scientific findings. Such methodological considerations are not confined to the “Hyksos” question, but are applicable world-wide through time.
This volume constitutes the largest, most focused chemical study of ancient pottery ever undertaken for the Old World. It demonstrates that the enigmatic “Hyksos” of Egyptian history and legend most likely immigrated into the Nile Delta from the Gaza region of southern Palestine. Their higher socio-economic status at their new-found capital of Avaris, from which they ruled Egypt for more than a century (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is evidenced by the massive importation of goods from their Gaza homeland, including resinated wine, and by the wholesale transplantation of burial, religious, technological, and culinary traditions as reflected in foreign pottery types. Less intense contacts with Middle Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Crete, and Cyprus are also documented in this investigation.
Papers by Patrick McGovern
Working hypotheses, which draw upon as many relevant disciplines as possible to derive the maximum information from a very limited database, are key to the highly interdisciplinary field of organic residue analysis in archaeology, a branch of biomolecular archaeology. Archaeology and chemistry are most important for effectively developing and testing such hypotheses, but botany, zoology, geology, etc. also need to be taken into account. Archaeologically, the goal is to obtain as many relevant samples as possible from the best preserved and dated contexts, which have been subjected to the least degradation and disturbance by later natural processes and human handling, including washing and conservation treatment. Chemically, molecular bio-markers of natural products need to be defined and identified by the best and most appropriate techniques, together with bioinformatics searches and assessment of degradation. With ever-improving techniques and new data, previously analyzed samples need to be retested and hypotheses possibly reformulated. Consideration of three case studies illustrates this holistic approach to inductive hypothesis generation and deduc-tive testing: (1) new chemical findings that attest to grape wine in amphoras on board the 14th c. B.C. Uluburun ship, the earliest recorded Mediterranean wreck; (2) recently published research on beeswax/mead in Chalcolithic Israel and Neolithic China and Poland; and (3) recent articles on milk products from 2nd millennium B.C. Central Asia and Neolithic Poland. Potential pitfalls leading to weak hypotheses and mistaken conclusions are described, and a more productive approach is proposed.
Chemical analyses of ancient organic compounds absorbed into the pottery fabrics from sites in Georgia in the South Caucasus region,dating to the early Neolithic period (ca. 6,000–5,000 BC), provide the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine and viniculture from the Near East, at ca. 6,000–5,800 BC. The chemical findings are corroborated by climatic and environmental reconstruction, together with archaeobotanical evidence, including grape pollen, starch, and epidermal remains associated with a jar of similar type and date. The very large-capacity jars, some of the earliest pottery made in the Near East, probably served as combination fermentation, aging, and serving vessels. They are the most numerous pottery type at many sites comprising the so-called “Shulaveri-Shomutepe Culture” of the Neolithic period, which extends into western Azerbaijan and northern Armenia. The discovery of early sixth millennium BC grape wine in this region is crucial to the later history of wine in Europe and the rest of the world.
A broader goal of the Afterword is to elucidate how best to integrate scientific data and hypotheses with archaeological, textual, and other scientific findings. Such methodological considerations are not confined to the “Hyksos” question, but are applicable world-wide through time.
This volume constitutes the largest, most focused chemical study of ancient pottery ever undertaken for the Old World. It demonstrates that the enigmatic “Hyksos” of Egyptian history and legend most likely immigrated into the Nile Delta from the Gaza region of southern Palestine. Their higher socio-economic status at their new-found capital of Avaris, from which they ruled Egypt for more than a century (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is evidenced by the massive importation of goods from their Gaza homeland, including resinated wine, and by the wholesale transplantation of burial, religious, technological, and culinary traditions as reflected in foreign pottery types. Less intense contacts with Middle Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Crete, and Cyprus are also documented in this investigation.
Working hypotheses, which draw upon as many relevant disciplines as possible to derive the maximum information from a very limited database, are key to the highly interdisciplinary field of organic residue analysis in archaeology, a branch of biomolecular archaeology. Archaeology and chemistry are most important for effectively developing and testing such hypotheses, but botany, zoology, geology, etc. also need to be taken into account. Archaeologically, the goal is to obtain as many relevant samples as possible from the best preserved and dated contexts, which have been subjected to the least degradation and disturbance by later natural processes and human handling, including washing and conservation treatment. Chemically, molecular bio-markers of natural products need to be defined and identified by the best and most appropriate techniques, together with bioinformatics searches and assessment of degradation. With ever-improving techniques and new data, previously analyzed samples need to be retested and hypotheses possibly reformulated. Consideration of three case studies illustrates this holistic approach to inductive hypothesis generation and deduc-tive testing: (1) new chemical findings that attest to grape wine in amphoras on board the 14th c. B.C. Uluburun ship, the earliest recorded Mediterranean wreck; (2) recently published research on beeswax/mead in Chalcolithic Israel and Neolithic China and Poland; and (3) recent articles on milk products from 2nd millennium B.C. Central Asia and Neolithic Poland. Potential pitfalls leading to weak hypotheses and mistaken conclusions are described, and a more productive approach is proposed.
Chemical analyses of ancient organic compounds absorbed into the pottery fabrics from sites in Georgia in the South Caucasus region,dating to the early Neolithic period (ca. 6,000–5,000 BC), provide the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine and viniculture from the Near East, at ca. 6,000–5,800 BC. The chemical findings are corroborated by climatic and environmental reconstruction, together with archaeobotanical evidence, including grape pollen, starch, and epidermal remains associated with a jar of similar type and date. The very large-capacity jars, some of the earliest pottery made in the Near East, probably served as combination fermentation, aging, and serving vessels. They are the most numerous pottery type at many sites comprising the so-called “Shulaveri-Shomutepe Culture” of the Neolithic period, which extends into western Azerbaijan and northern Armenia. The discovery of early sixth millennium BC grape wine in this region is crucial to the later history of wine in Europe and the rest of the world.