The Yale Peabody Museum will explore the world’s first great beer culture at a unique event held on March 6 at 6:30 pm in the Central Gallery.
Archaeologist Tate Paulette will talk about his book In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia. The evening will also demonstrate experimental archaeology at work, featuring a tasting of reconstructed brews created by Yale students (valid ID required). The tasting is accompanied by a light fare of snacks. Admission is free but registration is required.
The event is sponsored by Yale Peabody Museum, Yale Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and The Franke Program in Science and the Humanities.
Four thousand years ago a song was composed in ancient Babylonia that preserves the oldest recorded recipe for how to brew beer. Paulette’s talk will take us back to that time to explain what we know about the beer making culture of the period and how we know it.
“My book introduces readers to the beers of the past, the people who brewed them and drank them, the taverns, temples and tombs where they did their drinking, the stories they told about beer, their preferred styles of drinking, their brewing equipment, their beer paraphernalia, and the beer-loving deities who governed their lives,” Paulette said.
“Tate’s work is equally engaging to scholars of the ancient Near East as to people interested in food history. It’s a uniquely captivating origins story of an unassuming beverage that changed the fate of humanity,” said Gojko Barjamovic, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
With the help of Paulette’s book, Barjamovic’s students have been working on recreating the ancient recipe together with a team of local brewers, biologists, and ancient historians. The fruits of their studies and labor will be sampled at the event.
Paulette is an archaeologist and Associate Professor in the Department of History at North Carolina State University. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus, Scotland, and the US, and he is currently co-directing an archaeological field project and field school at the site of Makounta-Voules-Mersinoudia in western Cyprus. He is author of In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia and editor of the forthcoming A Cultural History of Wine in Antiquity.