The story from NPR.
 |
| via NPR |
Of course, it's easy to screw a recipe up when you have the directions, probably a lot harder when you don't. Mead still sucks.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Iron Age Braggot Beer
Another beer recreation story. This beer was buried with an Iron Age Celtic warrior and appears to have been similar to Medieval braggot.
The story from NPR.
Apparently the recreated braggot sucked, which makes sense given the
honey content. Mead tastes like cough syrup, so if you took equal parts
of NyQuil, an amber ale, a couple squirts of almond air freshener and a
couple of peppermints, then you might be close.
Of course, it's easy to screw a recipe up when you have the directions, probably a lot harder when you don't. Mead still sucks.
The story from NPR.
Of course, it's easy to screw a recipe up when you have the directions, probably a lot harder when you don't. Mead still sucks.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Beer Brought Back to Life (Live Science)
Unlike most multi-celled animals who disintegrate after death, single-cell organisms can go dormant under the right conditions. See "Amber Ale: Brewing Beer from 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast"
Just released today is the announcement of the recreation of 200 year old beer aboard the wrecked H.M.S Sydney Cove. See "Oldest Beer Brewed from Shipwreck's 200-Year-Old Yeast Microbes" from LiveScience.
Theoretically, Saccharomyces could very well be suspended in the interior wax coating of Neolithic and Bronze Age beakers. Even if the wax is not visible to the naked eye, small globules may be present under microscopic examination. If wax is present, Saccharomyces is probably present as well. The real work would be attempting to isolate and reanimate the organisms.
There's several things we could learn about five thousand year old beer. The first is the sophistication level of brewing. One way to know this is by actually tasting the beer. The other is through genetic analysis. If multiple strains are present, we might learn about the alcohol content %, the time of year certain strains were used, and what they were used for (mead, barley beer, etc)
Chemical analysis will also do one other thing that I've suspected, the presence of oak lactones would mostly prove that log barrels (as I've hypothesized) were used to ferment and store beer instead of clay pottery. (See here)
 |
| Sydney Cove Shipwreck Beer Bottle (via ABC.au) |
Just released today is the announcement of the recreation of 200 year old beer aboard the wrecked H.M.S Sydney Cove. See "Oldest Beer Brewed from Shipwreck's 200-Year-Old Yeast Microbes" from LiveScience.
Theoretically, Saccharomyces could very well be suspended in the interior wax coating of Neolithic and Bronze Age beakers. Even if the wax is not visible to the naked eye, small globules may be present under microscopic examination. If wax is present, Saccharomyces is probably present as well. The real work would be attempting to isolate and reanimate the organisms.
There's several things we could learn about five thousand year old beer. The first is the sophistication level of brewing. One way to know this is by actually tasting the beer. The other is through genetic analysis. If multiple strains are present, we might learn about the alcohol content %, the time of year certain strains were used, and what they were used for (mead, barley beer, etc)
Chemical analysis will also do one other thing that I've suspected, the presence of oak lactones would mostly prove that log barrels (as I've hypothesized) were used to ferment and store beer instead of clay pottery. (See here)
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Tips and Tricks #1
Want to find flint? Here's two places to look if it isn't common in your area.
Anytime you go to the bank, hospital, college, botanical garden or city park, always be on the lookout for decorative rock beds or landscaping that incorporates rocks. Attractive river rocks are often trucked in from other places. If rounded limestone or quartzite are present, you might get lucky. I found thousands of enormous, dagger-worthy nodules among other rocks outside a doctor's office.
The easiest way to identify flint is to strike it, and then smell it. If you roll the wheel on a cigarette lighter, that's the smell. Do you get edges when you break it? If you strike it in the dark, you'll get a few sparks. The outside should be 'nodular' and semi-smooth for flint.
Often railroad tracks and highways are ballasted with some variation of limestone and quartzite. Technically speaking, depending on one's interpretation, this would more likely be chert, although is basically the same thing since no one definition separates the two.
If I can get past amateur hour, maybe I'll have some stone arrows worth posting.
 |
| Flint and a chuck of quartz-something |
Anytime you go to the bank, hospital, college, botanical garden or city park, always be on the lookout for decorative rock beds or landscaping that incorporates rocks. Attractive river rocks are often trucked in from other places. If rounded limestone or quartzite are present, you might get lucky. I found thousands of enormous, dagger-worthy nodules among other rocks outside a doctor's office.
The easiest way to identify flint is to strike it, and then smell it. If you roll the wheel on a cigarette lighter, that's the smell. Do you get edges when you break it? If you strike it in the dark, you'll get a few sparks. The outside should be 'nodular' and semi-smooth for flint.
Often railroad tracks and highways are ballasted with some variation of limestone and quartzite. Technically speaking, depending on one's interpretation, this would more likely be chert, although is basically the same thing since no one definition separates the two.
If I can get past amateur hour, maybe I'll have some stone arrows worth posting.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Arrowhead Shapes in Central Europe (Petřík, Sosna, Prokeš, 2016)
I'll have to rely on a few sentences of a pay-per-view abstract, but one point of interest is highlighted below. If I'm reading correctly, this suggests that a large percentage of arrowheads (probably those from burial) had not been used or retouched.
If this was true, then it might also follow that more perishable parts of the burial also followed this pattern. In other words, there could have been a specific 'burial dress' that included items made for the occasion. Given the work effort in constructing burial monuments and similar findings from daggers, we might imagine that the burial clothing, belts, hats and footwear were both costly in terms of time and resources.
OTOH, it could be these guys walked around displaying daggers and arrows they never used. I doubt it, but who knows.
[Link]
Abstract
Despite the large-scale expansion of Bell Beaker phenomenon, there is a tension between the normative Bell Beaker material culture categories and their local objectification in the form of real artefacts. Stone projectile points provide an opportunity to evaluate how much was the general category of such a point influenced by regional and local factors. The aim of this paper is to explore shape and size variation of Central European Bell Beaker projectile points from Moravia (Czech Republic) to elucidate factors responsible for this variation. The sample consists of 194 projectile points from 54 Central European Bell Beaker sites (2500–2300/2200 BC) distributed in Morava River catchment. The size and shape of projectile points were studied by landmark-based geometric morphometrics and expressed as shape groups, which have been assessed in terms of their spatial distribution, raw material, and reutilization. Although several shape categories of points were identified, there is a strong degree of uniformity in the research sample. The dominant shape category (75.4 % of points) was pervasive across geographic space and was not significantly affected either by raw material or reutilization. A lower degree of reutilization of points is interpreted as a consequence of a non-utilitarian role of projectile points, which represented a critical component of Bell Beaker mortuary practices.
See also [here]
If this was true, then it might also follow that more perishable parts of the burial also followed this pattern. In other words, there could have been a specific 'burial dress' that included items made for the occasion. Given the work effort in constructing burial monuments and similar findings from daggers, we might imagine that the burial clothing, belts, hats and footwear were both costly in terms of time and resources.
OTOH, it could be these guys walked around displaying daggers and arrows they never used. I doubt it, but who knows.
 |
| Curious Grave 8 from Kněževes (modified from Turek, 2012) |
Shape matters: assessing regional variation of Bell Beaker projectile points in Central Europe using geometric morphometrics
Petřík, J., Sosna, D., Prokeš, L. et al. Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2016). doi:10.1007/s12520-016-0423-z[Link]
Abstract
Despite the large-scale expansion of Bell Beaker phenomenon, there is a tension between the normative Bell Beaker material culture categories and their local objectification in the form of real artefacts. Stone projectile points provide an opportunity to evaluate how much was the general category of such a point influenced by regional and local factors. The aim of this paper is to explore shape and size variation of Central European Bell Beaker projectile points from Moravia (Czech Republic) to elucidate factors responsible for this variation. The sample consists of 194 projectile points from 54 Central European Bell Beaker sites (2500–2300/2200 BC) distributed in Morava River catchment. The size and shape of projectile points were studied by landmark-based geometric morphometrics and expressed as shape groups, which have been assessed in terms of their spatial distribution, raw material, and reutilization. Although several shape categories of points were identified, there is a strong degree of uniformity in the research sample. The dominant shape category (75.4 % of points) was pervasive across geographic space and was not significantly affected either by raw material or reutilization. A lower degree of reutilization of points is interpreted as a consequence of a non-utilitarian role of projectile points, which represented a critical component of Bell Beaker mortuary practices.
See also [here]
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Quirks in Blogger
Blogger has some quirks that I've tried to fix recently. All of 'blogs I follow' in the sidebar got knocked off. Other weird stuff happens that seem like stability issues. So I'm still adding stuff back in to the sidebar as I realize they're missing.
The Blogger app for small devices sucks as well. You'd think a zillion dollar company would have an app that is a little more stable and user friendly. Nope.
Anyhow, bear with me.
The Blogger app for small devices sucks as well. You'd think a zillion dollar company would have an app that is a little more stable and user friendly. Nope.
Anyhow, bear with me.
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