Alcohol and Humans - A Long and Social Affair

Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. The prevailing tendency to view alcohol merely as a 'social problem' or the popular notion that alcohol only serves to provide us with a 'hedonic' high, masks its importance in the social fabric of many human societies both past and present. To understand alcohol use, as a complex social practice that has been exploited by humans for thousands of years, requires cross-disciplinary insight from social/cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, psychologists, primatologists, and biologists.

This multi-disciplinary volume examines the broad use of alcohol in the human lineage and its wider relationship to social contexts such as feasting, sacred rituals, and social bonding. Alcohol abuse is a small part of a much more complex and social pattern of widespread alcohol use by humans. This alone should prompt us to explore the evolutionary origins of this ancient practice and the socially functional reasons for its continued popularity. The objectives of this volume are: (1) to understand how and why nonhuman primates and other animals use alcohol in the wild, and its relevance to understanding the social consumption of alcohol in humans; (2) to understand the social function of alcohol in human prehistory; (3) to understand the sociocultural significance of alcohol across human societies; and (4) to explore the social functions of alcohol consumption in contemporary society.

'Alcohol in Humans' will be fascinating reading for those in the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, as well as those with a broader interest in addiction.

Table of Contents

1: The puzzle of alcohol consumption, Robin Dunbar and Kimberley Hockings
2: The natural biology of dietary ethanol, and its implications for primate evolution, Robert Dudley
3: Hominoid Ancestry and the Adaptation to Dietary Ethanol, Matthew Carrigan
4: The Importance of Raffia Palm Wine to Coexisting Humans and Chimpanzees, Kimberley Hockings, Miho Ito and Gen Yamakoshi
5: The earliest toasts: archaeological evidence of the social and cultural construction of alcohol in prehistoric Europe, Elisa Guerra-Doce
6: Uncorking the past: alcoholic fermentation as humankind's first biotechnology, Patrick McGovern
7: Rituals and feasting as incentives for cooperative action at early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Oliver Dietrich and Laura Dietrich
8: Alcohol as embodied material culture: anthropological reflections on the deep entanglement of humans and alcohol, Michael Dietler
9: The nature of sweetness: an indigenous fermentation complex in Amazonian Guyana, Lewis Daly
10: Chicha as Water: Traditional Fermented Beer Consumption Among Forager Horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon, Asher Rosinger and Hilary Bethancourt
11: Feasting and its Role in Human Community Formation, Robin Dunbar
12: Through the drinking glass: a long history of pints and performative materialities in England, Angela McShane
13: Alcohol and humans: reflections and prospects, Kimberley Hockings and Robin Dunbar