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The discovery and rediscovery of how to make a fermented beverage from a natural or derived source of simple sugars has occurred in many places and at many times. Before the modern period, only the Eskimos, the peoples of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, and the Australian aborigines ap- parently lived out their lives without the medical benefits and mind-altering eects of alcohol, the principal drug in any fermented beverage. While polar regions lacked good resources for monosaccharides, honey and sugar-rich fruits and other plants are plentiful in temperate parts of the globe and the tropics. In the New World, maize (Zea mays) and the juice of the century plant (Agave amer- icana) and the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) were sweet enough to ferment directly into chicha, pulque, and cactus wine, respectively. Increasingly, archaeological, ethnographic, and textual evidence from around the world points to fermented beverages, especially in the context of feasting activities, as integral to cultures at many dierent levels: social, religious, eco- nomic, and political. Although the goals and behaviors of participants and the scale of feasting and drinking varied (Bray 2003; Dietler and Hayden 2001; Hay- den 1995; Potter 2000), feasts everywhere involved favorite foods and, almost invariably, fermented beverages. Feasts marked critical events in the lives of com- munities and individuals, and often entailed public rituals (Pauketat et al. 2002). Late pre-Hispanic Peru (Hastorf and Johannessen 1993; Moore 1989) exemplifies |
