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2015 Archaeology of Food: An Encyclopedia. edited by K. B. Metheny and M. C. Beaudry, pp. 46-47. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham.
Fermented and alcoholic beverages played a pivotal role in feastings and social events in past agricultural and urban societies across the globe, but the origins of the sophisticated relevant technologies remain elusive. It has long been speculated that the thirst for beer may have been the stimulus behind cereal domestication, which led to a major social-technological change in human history; but this hypothesis has been highly controversial. We report here of the earliest archaeological evidence for cereal-based beer brewing by a semi-sedentary, foraging people. The current project incorporates experimental study, contextual examination, and use-wear and residue analyses of three stone mortars from a Natufian burial site at Raqefet Cave, Israel (13,700–11,700 cal. BP). The results of the analyses indicate that the Natufians exploited at least seven plant taxa, including wheat or barley, oat, legumes and bast fibers (including flax). They packed plant-foods, including malted wheat/barley, in fiber-made containers and stored them in boulder mortars. They used bedrock mortars for pounding and cooking plant-foods, including brewing wheat/barley-based beer likely served in ritual feasts ca. 13,000 years ago. These innovations predated the appearance of domesticated cereals by several millennia in the Near East.
Press release for the BAAS Festival, University of Leicester
Barley, Malt & Ale in the Neolithic Near East, 10,000-5000 BC2002 •
The Press Release answers a specific set of questions posed by the BAAS - British Association for the Advancement of Science. There follows an outline of the presentation, which was done in the old fashioned way, with slides and overheads. I discussed the grain drying ovens at Jarmo, c7000 BC, the smooth plaster floors and the possibility that they could have been used as malting floors. Making malt and brewing beer from the grain was, perhaps, discovered in the Epi Palaeolithic by Natufian people over 10,000 years ago.
PLOS one
Experimental Barley Flour Production in 12,500-Year-Old Rock-Cut Mortars in Southwestern Asia2015 •
Experimental archaeology at a Natufian site in the Southern Levant documents for the first time the use of 12,500-year-old rock-cut mortars for producing wild barley flour, some 2,000 to 3,000 years before cereal cultivation. Our reconstruction involved processing wild barley on the prehistoric threshing floor, followed by use of the conical mortars (a common feature in Natufian sites), thereby demonstrating the efficient peeling and milling of hulled grains. This discovery complements nearly 80 years of investigations suggesting that the Natufians regularly harvested almost-ripe wild cereals using sickles hafted with flint blades. Sickles had been replicated in the past and tested in the field for harvesting cereals, thusly obtaining the characteristic sheen along the edge of the hafted flint blades as found in Natufian remnants. Here we report that Natufian wide and narrow conical mortars enabled the processing of wild barley for making the groats and fine flour that provided considerable quantities of nourishment. Dishes in the Early Natufian (15,000-13,500 CalBP) were groat meals and porridge and subsequently, in the Late Natufian (13,500-11,700 CalBP), we suggest that unleavened bread made from fine flour was added. These food preparing techniques widened the dietary breadth of the sedentary Natufian hunter-gatherers, paving the way to the emergence of farming communities, the hallmark of the Neolithic Revolution.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Response to comments on archaeological reconstruction of 13,000-y old Natufian beer making at Raqefet Cave, Israel2019 •
We address several questions raised by David Eitam regarding our paper on Natufian beer brewing at Raqefet Cave, Israel. We focus on such issues as the identification of cereal-based food fermentation, the reconstruction of the fermentation process, the functions of Natufian stone mortars, and our view of beer making in relation to the transition to food production.
Paper presented to the Barcelona Ancient Brewing Conference in October 2004. Evidence for and a discussion of the archaeological evidence for making malt and ale in the early Neolithic.
Wild Harvest: Plants in the hominin and pre-agrarian human worlds
Phytolith evidence of the use of plants as food by Late Natufians at Raqefet Cave2016 •
The Natufian culture was a critical junction in human subsistence, marking the first steps towards sedentism and the domestication of cereals and pulses. The Natufians are known to have collected large seeded grasses (wild barley and wheat) and small-seeded grasses prior to the onset of cultivation but in most of the Levant little direct evidence of this survives. A variety of stone mortars and mortars carved into bedrock are common on Natufian sites. These were often interpreted as reflecting intensification of cereal or acorn food preparation, though the proposition was rarely tested. This study uses phytoliths to interpret Late Natufian plant-use at Raqefet Cave in southeastern Mount Carmel, Israel. Phytolith analysis focused on 35 samples from bedrock mortars, human burials, and cave floor sediments in the cave. We show that the Late Natufians at Raqefet were consuming both small-grained grasses and wheat and barleys. Our findings also suggest that the mortars did not serve primarily as specialised grass-seed processing implements. There is also evidence the occupants of Raqefet Cave continued to utilise forest resources, even as Late Natufians shifted towards more exploitation of wild grasses elsewhere in the southern Levant.
The detection of direct archaeological remains of alcoholic beverages and their production is still a challenge in the archaeological sciences, as most of the markers known up to now are either not durable or diagnostic enough to be used as secure prove. The current study addresses this question by experimental work reproducing the malting processes and subsequent charring of the resulting products under laboratory conditions in order to simulate their preservation (by charring) in archaeological contexts and to explore the preservation of microstructural alternations of the involved cereal grains. The experimentally germinated and charred grains showed clearly degraded (thinned) aleurone cell walls. The histological alternations of the cereal grains were observed and quantified using reflected light and scanning electron microscope as well as corresponding morphometric and statistical software. In order to verify the experimental observations of histological alternations, amorphous charred objects (ACO) containing cereal remains originating from five archaeological sites dating to the 4th millennium BCE were considered: Two of these sites are archaeologically recognisable brewing installations from Predynastic Egypt, while the three roughly contemporary central European lakeshore settlements lack such specific context of the analysed cereal-based food remains. The aleurone cell wall thinning known from food technological research and observed in our own experimental material was indeed also recorded in the archaeological finds. The Egyptian materials derive from beer production with certainty, supported by the ample contextual and artefactual data. The Neolithic lakeshore settlement finds currently represent the oldest traces of malting in central Europe, while the bowl-shaped bread-like object possibly even points towards early beer production in central Europe. One major further implication of our study is that the cell wall breakdown in the grain’s aleurone layer can be used as a general marker for malting processes with relevance for a wide range of charred archaeological finds of cereal products.
S. Piazzese, Schelling e Pareyson: sulla rilevanza filosofica del cristianesimo come pensiero tragico, in «Lo Sguardo», N. 34, 2022 (I), pp. 357-368
Schelling e Pareyson: sulla rilevanza filosofica del cristianesimo come pensiero tragico2023 •
International Journal of Practical Theology
Theological Reflection: Methods2008 •
Régészeti nyomozások 2. Szerk.: Ilon Gábor.
Attila sírjának nyomában. A jászalsószentgyörgyi késő szarmata kori halomsíros temető / Tracing Attila's grave. The Late Sarmatian-period barrow cemetery of Jászalsószentgyörgy2019 •
Cairo Studies in English
A Counteractive Cognitive Approach to the Fixity of Colonial Categorical Borders in Miko Peled’s The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine2021 •
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies
Victorian Babylon: People, Streets, and Images in Nineteenth-Century London2001 •
PubMed
Nanoparticle or conventional adjuvants: which one improves immune response against Brucellosis?2019 •
2018 •
Progress In Electromagnetics Research B
A Review of Photonic Generation of Arbitrary Microwave Waveforms2017 •
Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory
ALVEC: Auto-scaling by Lotka Volterra elastic cloud: A QoS aware non linear dynamical allocation model2019 •
Nordic Studies in Science Education
Opportunities for Education for Sustainability through multidimensional preschool science2019 •
Journal of Hepatology
Rising trends in cholangiocarcinoma: Is the ICD classification system misleading us?2012 •
Proceedings of the AAAI symposium series
GenAI and Socially Responsible AI in Natural Language Processing Applications: A Linguistic Perspective2024 •
I. POZZONI, Delirio in minuscole, in “Pomezia Notizie”, Pomezia, XVI/10, Ottobre 2008, 23.
Frammento ametrico: Delirio in minuscole