Linda Gosner
Principles of Archaeology
Paper 210/25/2010
Michael Dietler and Drink
Alcohol is a broad category of “embodied material culture” that, for millennia, has been a nearly omnipresent part of human life. It is the “most widely used psychoactive agent in the world” (Dietler 2006:229). Alcohol, broadly defined, includes any beverage containing ethanol (C2H5OH) that produces mind-altering effects when consumed. Because various fruits, grains, roots, honey, and other products can be fermented to make alcoholic beverages, almost every society has access to the basic materials necessary for production (Heath 1987:100; Dietler 1990:369). Despite its ubiquity and its role in social, economic, political, and religious experiences, drinking was rarely a focus of anthropological investigation until the late 1960s. Earlier studies tended to focus instead on alcohol in the context of biology, medicine, public health, and social psychology; anthropologists who noted the role of alcohol in their ethnographic studies were rarely acquainted with research in these other disciplines (Dietler 1990, 2006).
Beginning in the 1960s anthropologists began to pay more focused attention to the study of alcohol. In 1965, David Mandelbaum published an influential article in Current Anthropology entitled Alcohol and Culture. A series of conferences on both alcohol and cannabis were held as a result of increasing interest in drink, including the conference of the World Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. In the 1970s, Brown University anthropologist Dwight Heath began to publish extensively on alcohol (Heath 1976). Michael Dietler, now at the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology, saw alcohol studies as a “mutually heuristic bridge across the subdisciplines of anthropology” (Dietler 2006:231). He triggered the archaeological study of alcohol and drinking practices with a seminal paper titled Driven by Drink: The Role of Drinking in the Political Economy and the Case of Early Iron Age France (1990). In his article, Dietler developed a framework through which to evaluate drinking practices in the archaeological record from social, economic, and political perspectives. He looked, in particular, at how the role of drinking changes in colonial situations using the example of Etrucsan and Greek colonization of Celtic Iron Age France.
Dietler noted that drinking in traditional societies is primarily a social act, whereas alcoholism and addictive drinking as we perceive them are mainly confined to industrialized Western societies. In the traditional societies with which archaeology is concerned, drinking facilitates various forms of social interaction. It is often part of the etiquette of hospitality; Dietler points to ethnographic examples where guests are offered alcohol upon entering a home, as the Mapuche of Chile do with chicha (beer), the Tiriki of Kenya also do with beer, and the Yakut of Siberia do with fermented milk (1990:361). In societies where alcohol is prohibited by religion or law, other forms of food or drink certainly serve the same function. Offering tea, for example, is a sign of hospitality in many Islamic societies.
Extending beyond its social role in hospitality, alcohol often plays a part in ceremonies and rites of passage, including births, weddings, initiations, funerals, and any number of religious rituals. Sharing drinks with larger groups on any of these occasions can have the effect of increasing the status of the individual or group that provides the alcohol (Dietler 1990:362-363). Because of this phenomenon, alcohol can either increase “social solidarity” by bringing together groups of people in informal or formalgatherings, or it can have the opposite effect. Dietler argues that alcohol can create social conflict, differentiation, and inequality, or simply demonstrate that these phenomena already exist. A group of people who are able to provide more alcohol to others, with more frequencythan others can may increase their social standing.Likewise, alcohol can perpetuate differences in gender roles. Dietler noted that even when men and women both have access to alcohol, men normally drink more than women do, while women are more frequently engaged in the labor of brewing and other production processes (1990:364). As with hospitality in dry societies, I would argue that other materials also replace drink in these instances of gender disparity and social hierarchy. In modern Egypt, a great majority of men smoke tobacco but traditional women rarely do. Men often offer cigarettes to their peers in social situations; however, it is considered inappropriate for men to smoke in front of their elders, including their father, elder brothers, and uncles.
Social relations of inequality created or demonstrated by alcohol consumption naturally have political implications. Dietler emphasizes that drink can be important in the implementation of informal leadership and personal power. A person can build what Dietler terms “free-floating power” or “social credit” by exercising hospitality. Where specialized political roles exist, drink can be a form of tribute paid to a chief, for example, or redistributed by chiefs to maintain their power (1990:370).
In attempting to elucidate the utility of alcohol studies in archaeology, Dietler also outlined the role of drink in the economy. Alcohol’s economic importance is potentially easier to identify in the archaeological record than evidence of its ceremonial, symbolic, or social importance is; the traces of the latter are often more ephemeral.Ceramic amphorae used as containers for wine, for example, survive well in the archaeological record and are often used to study trade networks in the ancient Mediterranean.
Other implications of alcohol are harder to identify, but are nevertheless central to traditional economies (Dietler and Hayden 2001). Especially in pre-monetary economies, work-party feasts in which alcohol was plentifully distributed were a way to mobilize labor. Even today, someone requiring a labor-intensive task such as house construction couldgather a group of people to jointly complete the project with the expectation that they would reward the workers with a feast (Dietler 1990:367). Work-party feasts can precipitate economic inequality; when a man is able to host feasts more frequentlythan his piers, he may “augment his capital” more quickly; whereas those providing labor at the work party will never benefit from their efforts beyond enjoying themselves at the feast (1990:368).
Post 1990, Dietler has continued to study drink as part and parcel of feasting, which he calls “commensalism.”In 2001, he published an edited volume with Brian Hayden to place feasting in a theoretical framework. In one chapter, Dietler and Ingerid Herbich discuss feasting in terms of labor mobilization, now labeling work-party feasts “collective work events” or CWEs (2001:241). They cite the ethnographic example of CWEs that the Samia in Kenya organizefor the purpose of extracting iron ore for making hoes. Men provide the extraction labor, and the organizer’s wives brew millet beer and prepare the food for the laborers to consume at the feast. The iron hoes that are the end result of these work parties become bridewealththat the organizeruses to acquire more wives. The more wives a man has, the more labor he has available to organize future collective work events, and the process repeats itself (2001:249-254).
These various social, political, and economic phenomena involved in alcohol and drinking practices – all interconnected and intertwined – develop in ways specific to each culture. Thus, Dietler emphasizes that examining drinking patterns in the context of cultural contact is of “great relevance to archaeologists” (1990:373). Changes in a society’s drinking habits, instigated by contact with a new culture, can significantly alter the society’s political, social, and economic fabric, providing rich subjects for study. Archaeologists can investigate, to cite several examples, brewing, drinking, serving, and transport vessels; feasting ritual sites and domestic kitchens; breweries and wineries;shipwrecks containing wine amphorae; iconographic or textual representations of drinking, and so on (2001:233).
In his 1990 article, and inmuch subsequent writing (for example: 1997, 1989), Dietler has looked at the role of drinking in Early Iron Age France after the late 7th century B.C.E, when the first large-scale trading with the Etruscans and Greeks began. He found significant differences in the ways thatthe indigenous Celtic societies of the Rhônebasin in France as compared to those of the Hallstatt region (encompassing parts of present-day Burgundy,southern Germany, and Switzerland)reacted to imported Etruscan and Greek wine. In doing so, he developed a widely applicable model.
According to this system, the researcher must first determine whether there is an indigenous tradition of drinking. Dietler found evidence for such a tradition both in textual sources and in the archaeological record. Ancient authors reported that the Celts of Iron Age Western Europe drank a variety of local beers made from wheat, honey, and barley (Dietler 1990:382). Additionally, native drinking vessels in the archaeological record have been found to contain the pollen of beeswax residues, perhaps from mead. Often drinking implements such as bronze cauldrons, bucket strainers, ladles, and cups were included in elite burial assemblages, suggesting the “prevalence and symbolic importance of indigenous drinking and feasting” (Dietler 1990:382).
The Celtic tribes of the Rhône basin seemed to adopt imported Mediterraneanwine readily, but perhaps not its associated cultural practices or beliefs. For example, the Celts did not haveGreek-style symposia, as the complete range of pottery forms typical of these drinking parties have not been found in France. Additionally, ancient authors such as Diodorus criticized the Celts for drinking wine straight rather than adding water, as was done at symposia (Dietler 1990:383).
Next, according to the Dietler model, one must determine whether a foreign drink replaces native drink, or simply becomes an additional option inthe drinking repertoire. In the Rhône basin, wine amphorae are only discovered in vast quantities near the shore, but not in the interior, suggesting that the imported wine did not replace the local beerbrewed throughout the region. Posidonius, aGreek geographer of the 1st century B.C.E., reported that most Celts only drank beer andwine was reserved for the wealthy. Wine had the appealof being an exotic good – the production technique, the ingredients, and even the drinking vessels were all foreign (later, imitations of foreign wine vessels were made locally at Massalia, modern-day Marseilles). Also, wine could be preserved longer than beer, so it could be transported over longer distances and saved for special occasions (1990:383-384). So, imported wine had various advantages, but certainly didn’t replace beer on all levels of Celtic society.
After determining these basic ways that the Celts responded to the new availability of wine, Dietler considered the possible social, economic, and political repercussions. The settlement patterns and burial evidence for the Celts in the lower Rhône basin do not show marked social stratification or distinct hierarchies; it was a “hetrarchical” society. In contrast, the Celtsof the Hallstatt region show strong political centralization and social hierarchy. Dietler convincingly demonstrates that drink affectedthe preexisting social fabric of each area in different ways. In the lower Rhône Basin, imported Mediterranean goods associated with wine are found frequently and local production of Greek-style wine-drinking vessels began at Massalia early in the 6th century B.C.E. In the Hallstatt region, however, drinking vessels were generally found only as part of elite burialequipmentand are often of a “luxurious, rare, or even spectacular nature” (Dietler 1990:356); they were not reproduced locally. Amphorae are found much more frequently in France than in the Hallstatt region.
These practices are clearly not a blanket emulation of Greek culture, as the model of Hellenization previously used to explain these changes in material culture implies (Dietler 1990:356). Instead, each society adopted the most advantageous elements of Etruscan and Greek drinking habits. Dietler suggests that the most powerful and wealthiest people of the Hallstatt region acquired luxury drinking goods as status markers; whether they were drinking native beer or imported wine, they could demonstrate their place in the hierarchy simply by using these imported items that lower- status people could not afford. In the lower Rhône basin, foreign wine itself was of greater utility. In this society, where people were on a more equal footing, wine could be employed in labor mobilization in the same way that beer and feasts are employed for collective work events in present-day Kenya. Likewise, the imported wine could increase the scale of hospitality: more drink was available even without an increase in local production (1990:385). Wine could be used to create more power within the traditional framework of drinking habits, or become a “power-defining commodity” (1990:388).
Michael Dietler’s initial article was a success, and has served as the foundation for much of his own subsequent work on Iron Age colonialism in France. His framework has inspired several interesting studies including, for example, Alexander Joffe’s study on alcohol in Western Asia during the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C.E. (Joffee 1998) and Justin Jennings’ study on feasting and beer production in the prehistoric Andes (Jennings 2005). In keeping with his view of alcohol as a way of bridging anthropological subdisciplines, Dietler’s continued work on feasting and alcohol incorporates ethnographic studies of the African Luo people and archaeological studies of the Iron Age western Mediterranean.
Bibliography
Dietler, Michael
2006 Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35: 229-249.
Dietler, Michael and Brian Hayden
2001 Digesting the Feast: Good to Eat, Good to Drink, Good to Think. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, pp. 1-20. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.
Dietler, Michael and Ingrid Herbich
2001 Feasts and Labor Mobilization: Dissecting a Fundamental Economic Practice. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, pp. 240-264. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.
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2001Theorizing the Feast: Rituals of Consumption, Commensal Politics, and Power in African Contexts. In Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power, edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden, pp. 65-114. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.
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