And an older article on the importance of mead/beer in the Iron Age:
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba57/feat2.html
In one corner stood an enormous bronze cauldron with decorative cast bronze lions around the rim. Badly worn, and repaired several times, the cauldron had clearly enjoyed hearty use over a number of years. And inside, to accompany our chieftain to the Otherworld, it contained over 600 pints (350 litres) of mead. By the time the grave at Hochdorf near Stuttgart was excavated by Jörg Biel in 1978-79, the mead had become a dark, shrunken, cake-like deposit in the bottom of the cauldron.
Dispensing prodigious quantities of alcoholic drink to followers was an important part of the political career of a prehistoric leader in western Europe during this period. The archaeology is supported by documentary sources, not only near-contemporary classical texts such as Poseidonius (2nd century BC) but also later texts from Ireland and Wales reflecting the continuation of the tradition.
These texts suggest that the ability to give feasts awash with alcoholic liquor was a key part of a leader's claim to rule. Such feasts might take place at inauguration ceremonies such as dynastic weddings, or to accompany the distribution of loot or booty from raids or trading expeditions.
Feasts of various types - community feasts, work-party feasts given to reward workers for the completion of communal building projects, ritual or even 'political' feasts - have roots deep in prehistory.
Ceramic vessel sets probably used to consume beer or mead appear mainly in male burials from the late Neolithic.
The political symbolism of drinking, particularly the connection between laith (Irish for liquor) and flaith (Irish for sovereignty or lordship), appear to have been maintained through time as well. Drinking horns, such as those found at Hochdorf, are frequently referred to as symbols of authority and kingship in Irish poetry, and as late as the 15th century a 300-year-old drinking horn was cited by the Kavanagh family as the basis for their claim to the kingship of Leinster.
The connection between the right to rule and the ability to host a feast at which alcoholic beverages are distributed is a constant in the Irish and Welsh literature. In the Irish Baile in Scail, for example, Conn and his followers are brought by the Phantom before a seated girl wearing a gold crown, with a silver vat in front of her, and a vessel of gold and a gold cup. As in most accounts of such inauguration feasts, the girl is the personification of Ireland, and whoever she offers the ale of sovereignty to will become king in a symbolic wedding ritual.
The fact that I find nothing unusual in citing a drinking horn as a claim to kingship must surely come from my Welsh/Irish heritage
I also enjoyed the short article at the bottom titled 'Drink before history'
Beer and mead, and combinations of mead-beer-fruit wine like the Danish concoction described above, are all still being made today by home brewers. The Sumerians left us written instructions for the production of beer without hops, and similar gruel-like ales that must be sipped through a straw are still produced in some parts of Africa, and elsewhere. The earliest ales were more of a mildly intoxicating food than a beverage.
They were also relatively low in alcohol content compared to mead. However, 'mead' covers a number of variations depending on the amount of honey used, the length of time spent in fermentation, and how the beverage is subsequently mixed.
Iron Age mead was not as potent as the wine produced in the Greek and Roman worlds. If Iron Age élites were concerned with the mood-altering impact of alcoholic beverages - looking to get the biggest bang for their buck - that would explain, at least in part, the appeal of Mediterranean booze.
Anyone else with drinking tales of their favorite peoples?
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"Give us the timber or we'll go all stupid and lawless on your butts". --Redcloud, MTF
