Kimberley Hockings - Alcohol and Humans: A Long and Social Affair

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ISBN 9780198842460

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This volume had its origins in a British Academy conference, which took place on 1314 September 2018 in London. The conference developed out of a realization that there was a growing number of people interested in the role that alcohol consumption has played in almost all human societies throughout time. The contributors had all individually developed interests in this topic from different disciplinary perspectives, but most had not actually met before.

We are very grateful to the British Academy for funding the conference as part of their 2018 conference series. Johanna Empson and Claire Pike, of the British Academy staff, were responsible for the administrative and organizational aspects of the conference and its day-to-day running, and we are deeply appreciative of their unstinting help. We thank Steve Livens and the British Beer and Pub Association for generously organizing a reception at the associated public debate held at the Academy on 12 September 2018.

Kim Hockings

Robin Dunbar

Robin I.M. Dunbar and Kimberley J. Hockings

Robert Dudley

Matthew Carrigan

Kimberley J. Hockings, Miho Ito, and Gen Yamakoshi

Elisa Guerra-Doce

Patrick E. McGovern

Oliver Dietrich and Laura Dietrich

Michael Dietler

Lewis Daly

Asher Y. Rosinger and Hilary J. Bethancourt

Robin I.M. Dunbar

Angela McShane

Kimberley J. Hockings and Robin I.M. Dunbar

Hilary J. Bethancourt Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

Matthew Carrigan Research Scientist, Biotork, Gainesville, FL, USA

Lewis Daly Teaching Fellow in Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK

Michael Dietler Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Laura Dietrich Researcher, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, Germany

Oliver Dietrich Research Assistant, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin, Germany

Robert Dudley Chair and Professor, Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Robin Dunbar Emeritus Professor, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Anna Watts Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Oxford, UK

Elisa Guerra-Doce Associate Professor, Departamento de Prehistoria, Arqueologa, Antropologa Socialy CC.TT. Historiogrficas, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

Kimberley J. Hockings Lecturer, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall, UK

Miho Ito Graduate Student, Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Patrick E. McGovern Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project and Adjunct Professor, Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Angela McShane Head of Research Development, Wellcome Collection, London, UK

Asher Y. Rosinger Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA

Gen Yamakoshi Vice Director and Associate Professor, Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Robin I.M. Dunbar and Kimberley J. Hockings

Alcohol (or, more strictly, ethanol) has an unusually mixed reputation. Excess consumption has obvious harmful consequences, not just for our cognitive and social competences in the immediate aftermath of consumption but also for our health in the longer term. Yet, since the dawn of time, humans have persisted in its consumption, especially in social contexts. There is no human society with access to the resources to make alcohol that has not, at some time or other, manufactured and consumed it. Most people will be aware that Roman wines have been found preserved in amphorae on the seabed where they were deposited by shipwrecks 2000 years ago. Fewer, perhaps, will be aware that recent technical advances in archaeology have made it possible to identify some of the hitherto overlooked residues left in containers by alcoholic beverages brewed as long as 9000 years ago.

Of course, alcohol is only one of a wide range of natural psychotropic substances that humans have discovered and used through the ages. Cannabis has been widely used historically in many parts of Asia (). Many of these give hedonic pleasure or were used to provide medical benefits. Like alcohol, however, all have adverse health consequences if consumed to excess.

What sets alcohol apart from most of these psychotropic drugs is its use in social contexts rather than for quasi-religious experiences or for purely solitary hedonic pleasure. Alcohol has featured in almost as many different social contexts as humans can muster: religious rituals, entertaining guests, celebrations of all kinds from marriages to anniversaries, dedications (the proverbial bottle of champagne that launched most of the ships built in the shipyards of Britain), casual social events, battlefield preparations (the daily rum ration of the British Royal Navy during the nineteenth century, or the