Josh Perez, Don Nguyen, Noe Guzman Rubio, Carlo Ricci (group 4)
Beer Archaeology Article Samples:
Article 1: Archaeological Parameters for the Beginning of Beer
In the absence of clear archaeological evidence, it is difficult to state with any certainty when or where brewing began, let alone why or how. After World War II, much archaeological attention was focused on the transition from food collecting to food production (4000-6000 B.C.). In a short article in the October 1952 Scientific American, Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago reported on his excavations in the Zagros mountains of eastern Iraq, noting that by the time the village of Qalat Jarmo was occupied, ca 4750 B.C., several kinds of grains and legumes were being grown. The Near East was intimately linked with the use of these grains for the preparation of flour for bread making. Braidwood closed his introduction with the comment, "I am in no way unattracted to the idea, as Sauer put it, that "thirst rather than hunger may have been the stimulus behind the origin of small grain agriculture.”
Article 2: History, Chemistry, and Cold Beer
Historians think the discovery made people happy enough to consider ending life as hunter gatherers and settling down to agriculture and brewing, the beginnings of civilization. Beer even became a leading source of nutrition and was tied up with religious observances and feasts. Egyptian Pharaohs drank it. Sophocles urged Greeks to enjoy beer responsibly in the fifth century B.C.
Article 3: In Ancient Egypt, The Beer of Kings is a Sophisticated Brew
Artistic depictions and written sources attest to beer's popularity in early Egypt. The elite and hoi polloi alike enjoyed beers with names like Joy Bringer, the Beautiful and Heavenly. They drank through tubes from ceramic cups and sometimes did not know when to say when. An Egyptian papyrus of 1400 B.C. warned of the dangers of loose talk "in the taverns in which they drink beer." Scholars have not been sure how the Egyptians brewed their beer. In some temple art, it appeared that beer was made by crumbling bread into water and letting it ferment by yeast from the bread, yielding a coarse liquid swimming with chaff. But a researcher at Cambridge University in England has now examined beer residues and desiccated bread loaves from Egyptian tombs and found evidence of much more sophisticated brewing techniques in the second millennium B.C.
A microscopic analysis of beer residues, she said, indicated a more elaborate brewing process, blending cooked and uncooked malt with water and producing a refined liquid free of husk. The microstructure of the residues, Dr. Samuel concluded, "is remarkably similar to that of modern cereal foods."