Patrick McGovern | University of Pennsylvania (original) (raw)

Patrick E. McGovern is the Scientific Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, where he is also an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology.

His academic background combined the physical sciences, archaeology, and history-an A.B. in Chemistry from Cornell University, graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Archaeology and Literature from the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department of the University of Pennsylvania.

Over the past two decades, he has pioneered the exciting interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology which is yielding whole new chapters concerning our human ancestry, medical practice, and ancient cuisines and beverages.

He is the author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton U., 2003/2004), also translated into French and Italian. A new 2nd edition, with an Afterword bringing it up to date, was recently published in the Princeton Science Library.

Other alcoholic beverages, including grape wine, are dealt with in Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (U. California, 2009/2010), which follows human ingenuity in making fermented beverages before and after our ancestors came “out of Africa” 200,000 years ago and traveled around the world.

His latest book, Ancient Brews Rediscovered and Re-created), was published in June 2017 (WW Norton, New York). It tells the scientific, experimental, and personal backstories of how the Dogfish Head Brewery series of Ancient Ales and Spirits came about (nine re-created brews thus far). Ranging from galactic alcohol to the beginnings of life on earth to how our early ancestors reveled in extreme fermented beverages of every kind, including grape wine, the book lays the groundwork for how to go about bringing the past alive in as authentic a way as possible. It sheds new light on the earliest biotechnology of our innovative species. Dogfish Head, one of the fastest growing craft breweries in the U.S. Midas Touch was its first and premier Ancient Ale. It is its most awarded brew, and among the best-selling honey-based fermented beverages in the U.S.

Popularly, Dr. Pat is known as the “Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages.”

His personal website has pdf links to many other wine-related “Articles,” as well as the latest “News” of lectures, events, films, and stories in the popular and scientific press:
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/

Recently, he was lead author on a seminal paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA: “Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus” (http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/48/E10309.full.pdf?with-ds=yes).
Phone: .215-898-1164
Address: homepage with pdf's of articles under "Books":
http://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/

Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project
and Adjunct Prof., Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104, U.S.A.

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