[Stones] bronze age ale

[Ric]

Hi Merryn,

point taken with thanks: the barley may have been
grown especially for beer production, it seems, rather
than as a food or fodder crop?

i note also, with interest, the traces of Meadowsweet
in the apparent beer brewing process, a plant
associated with mythology in the Mabinogion?

cheers!

Ric

--- Merryn Dineley <merryn at dineley.com> wrote:

> Ric, according to my research, brewing was a feature
> of neolithic grain 
> processing, from c4000 BC onwards in Britain and was
> in full swing 
> before the Bronze`Age. Evidence at Barnhouse, a
> neolithic village near 
> the Stones of Stenness, of organic residues in
> Grooved ware indicates 
> turning barley into malt sugars and ale. Drains and
> huge pots indicate 
> the wet processing of barley.
> 
> I have to agree with you about stereotypical images
> of neolithic 
> farmers! Nobody woke up one day and said 'I think I
> shall be a farmer 
> from now on' It was a gradual development and
> hunting/gathering was 
> important for a very long time.
> 
> I think malting is the key. The research into Bronze
> Age fulact fiadhs 
> is interesting because these features have been
> interpreted as meat 
> cooking places up to now - but with no evidence of
> bone at the sites. I 
> think mashing is a much better explanation. Hot
> stone mashing with 
> fermentation to follow! Barley is of little use for
> flour or bread but 
> is great for malting.
> merryn
> 
> Ric wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > i guess the NW European cereal yield in the Late
> > Bronze Age might have been approaching practical
> > levels of 'milled barley' to kick-start the
> brewing
> > industry, but we seem to have developed a
> > stereo-typical image of the prehistoric farmer who
> > just turned up one day, and created - as if by
> magic -
> >  rolling vistas of endless cereals rippling in the
> > breeze?
> > 
> > the truth is more likely that agriculture was a
> > lengthy stop-start process of experimentation,
> > presumably originally subservient to animal
> husbandry
> > (esp. cattle), and pretty much running parallel to
> > hunter-gatherer modes of subsistence for many
> > generations if not many hundreds of years - after
> the
> > gradual arrival of 'the neolithic cultural
> package' of
> > proto-agriculture, from Southern Europe?
> > 
> > just a thought?
> > 
> > ;)
> > 
> > Ric