Most ancient Egyptian pottery tends to be very utilitarian: rough vessels used for day to day purposes, the pots and pans of the land of the pharaohs. Occasionally, however, Egyptian potters produced beautifully decorated wares. Techniques such as slipping and polishing, incised decoration, modeling, and painted decoration (as in this example) produced Egypt’s fine wares. [...]
The practice of wine-making or viniculture can be traced back to the Neolithic period, 7,000 years ago when the first Eurasian grape vines were domesticated for this purpose. This “Wine Jar” was found at Hasanlu in Hajji Firuz, Iran. It has been reconstructed from multiple fragments. The jar is one of a series of jars [...]
This bronze figure of Silenus riding a wine-skin is a reproduction from Penn Museum’s Wanamaker Bronze Collection. This collection includes reproductions of the bronzes found at Pompeii and Herculaneum from the National Museum of Naples. The original was made in Naples before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Originally, the sileni (plural) were [...]
When I first started working at the Penn Museum (back in 2006 CE), I inherited an office that had probably been used as a supply closet at one time or another. The shelves came stocked with publications about Mayan hieroglyphs, Etruscan armor, and a whole mess of those off-putting, 1-color pubs from the 80s. Among [...]
A group of archaeologists working in Armenia had something to toast in the new year: they announced that they had unearthed a surprisingly advanced winemaking operation, discovered in a cave hear a remote Armenian village. The operation dates back 6,000 years-making it the earliest known site in the world for wine-making with grapes! This exciting [...]
Okay, so it hit the tiny youtube screen, but we like that even better. Dr. Patrick McGovern, has the tongue-tying title of Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. (It’s just nice to see “fermented beverages” and “health” all [...]
