Pueblo traded for chocolate big-time

Topic:Cacao in the Southwest Chocolate may have provided sweet impetus for extensive trade between ancient northern and southern societies in the Americas. Pueblo people living in what’s now the U.S. Southwest drank a cacao-based beverage that was imported from Mesoamerican cultures in southern Mexico or Central America, a new chemical analysis of Pueblo vessels finds. [...]

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Barley, First Domesticated Wild Grass

Topic Barley, Cereal Grain It is said the Ancient Egyptians believed that one day Osiris, god of agriculture, made a decoction of barley that had germinated with the sacred waters of the Nile, and then distracted by other urgent affairs, left it out in the sun and forgot it. When he came back the mixture [...]

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Neolithic treasure chest

Topic: Diet and Ritual Neolithic Germany   Thanks to preservation under waterlogged conditions, a well in the federal state of Saxony, Germany,  has revealed unprecedented information about woodworking skills, diet, and ritual in early Neolithic Europe. Found in early 2008 at Altscherbitz, during construction work on the Leipzig/Halle airport, the well was carefully isolated and [...]

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Researchers blog about Kenyan archaeological excavation

Topic:Blog on Neltithic Hunter/Gatherers       For the first time ever, work by researchers with Penn Museum’s archaeological excavation at the Laikipia Archaeological Project in north-central Kenya is being chronicled in a blog, as well as in photos and film. Kathleen Ryan, a consulting scholar in the African Section at the Museum, is leading [...]

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Burnt mound theory tested to perfection

Topic Ancient British Ale David Chapman found an eroding “burnt mound” – a common but unexplained prehistoric mound of fired stones – on the Lleyn peninsula at Hell’s Mouth. Excavations in 2008 revealed an oak trough containing a residue of burnt stones and charred chaff and seeds (News, Mar/Apr 2009). Last summer Chapman and a [...]

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Mead-Glorious and Delicious- Mead-Part 5

 Topic: Racking day         Day 28-March 13, 2011 We are a bit short of 30 days but the bubbles in the fermentation lock have slowed to one bubble every 45 seconds or so, making it a good time to rack the mead. Since I made more mead than I intended I am [...]

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A Culture Written in Stone and Soil

Topic:Early agriculture on Mo’orea   Walking up the sweltering, steep slopes of Mo‘orea’s gray volcanic peaks, the lumbering banyan trees, bursts of pink blooms, and iconic views of the South Pacific can mesmerize. But if you stop to catch your breath and glance down, a whole new set of wonders reveals itself at your feet. [...]

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Neanderthals were nifty at controlling fire, says CU-Boulder-led study

Neanderthals were nifty at controlling fire, says CU-Boulder-led study. Don’t worry there’s somthing about food at the very end! If they controled fire I wonder if their diet was more complex than we have thought in the past.  it’s worth some more checking. More on this years Mead on Wednesday! Joanna Linsley-Poe

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Mead-Glorious and Delicious- Mead Part 4

Topic: Egypt-Fermented Honey-Drink of the Gods:   “Fermentation needs fire and pottery,” wrote R.J. Forbes in his Studies in Ancient Technology volume III published in 1965, part of a 9 volume set covering such topics of the ancient world. He goes on to say “ the techniques of fermenting came with organized  agriculture, some traces [...]

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Ancient grinding holes offer hard clues to past

Topic: Mortar holes used to grind food One day – maybe eight or 10 centuries ago – some people knelt on an expanse of rock and ground mesquite pods into meal in mortar holes etched in the stone. Those people, members of a civilization known today as the Hohokam, are long gone. But their bedrock [...]

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