Patrick Edward McGovern
Patrick Edward McGovern (born December 9, 1944) is the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, where he is also an adjunct professor of anthropology.
A cesium magnetometer survey in 1978 in the Baq'ah Valley of Jordan, a Penn Museum project under the direction of McGovern, located one of the largest early Iron Age burial caves ever found in the southern Levant.
This field promises to open up whole new chapters relating to human genetic and cultural development, including cuisine, medical practice, architecture and other crafts over the past 4 million years and more.
First came the chemical attestation of the earliest Royal or Tyrian Purple, the famous dye of the seafaring Phoenicians, demonstrating that ancient organic compounds (specifically, 6,6'-dibromoindigotin) could survive over 3000 years.
[6][7][8] Amphora and vat sherds with purple residues on their interiors were recovered by a Penn Museum team at Sarepta (Sarafand) along the coast of Lebanon, the first homeland site in Phoenicia to be extensively excavated.
In the early 1990s, the laboratory identified the earliest chemically confirmed instances of grape wine and barley beer from the Near East, viz., from Godin Tepe in Iran, ca.
The laboratory has embarked on a recent initiative ("Archaeological Oncology: Digging for Drug Discovery") to discover herbal and tree resin compounds in ancient alcoholic beverages that have anti-cancer and other medicinal properties.
3150 B.C., has revealed the presence of a host of herbal additives, including herbs—savory (Satureja), Artemisia seibeni (a member of the wormwood family), blue tansy (Tanacetum annuum), balm (Melissa), senna (Cassia), coriander (Coriandrum), germander (Teucrium), mint (Mentha), sage (Salvia), and/or thyme (Thymus/Thymbra).
[16] Some active compounds in these plants have also shown to have in vitro anti-cancer effects[15] The jar residues also yielded the earliest fragments of ribosomal DNA (as long as 840 base pairs) from a precursor of the wine/beer/bread yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae[17] In the late 1990s, the laboratory and collaborators analyzed the extraordinarily well-preserved organic residues inside the largest known Iron Age drinking-set, excavated inside the burial chamber of the Midas Tumulus at Gordion in Turkey, ca.
wine, beer and mead ("Midas Touch," see below) with a spicy, barbecued lamb and lentil stew–is the first time that an ancient meal has been re-created based solely on the chemical evidence.
His most recent book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (Berkeley: University of California),[20] received an award from the Archaeological Institute of America.
[24] In 2000, his book entitled The Foreign Relations of the "Hyksos": A Neutron Activation Study of Middle Bronze Age Pottery from the Eastern Mediterranean (Oxford: Archaeopress) was published.
