Early evidence for beer drinking in a 9000-year-old platform mound in southern China

Alcoholic beverages played an essential role in rituals in ancient societies. Here we report the first evidence for beer drinking in the context of burial ritual in early Holocene southern China. Recent archaeological investigations at Qiaotou (9,000–8,700 cal. BP) have revealed a platform mound containing human burials and high concentrations of painted pottery, encircled by a human-made ditch. By applying microfossil (starch, phytolith, and fungi) residue analysis on the pottery vessels, we found that some of the pots held beer made of rice (Oryza sp.), Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and USOs. We also discovered the earliest evidence for using mold saccharification-fermentation starter in beer making, predating written records by 8,000 years. The beer at Qiaotou was likely served in rituals to commemorate the burial of the dead. Ritualized drinking probably played an integrative role in maintaining social relationships, paving the way for the rise of complex farming societies four millennia later.

MOTIVACIJA I NAVIKE PIJENJA ALKOHOLNIH PIĆA ADOLESCENATA GRADA DUBROVNIKA

ALCOHOL DRINKING MOTIVATION AND HABITS OF ADOLESCENTS IN THE CITY OF DUBROVNIK Adolescent alcohol use is one of the biggest public health problems of youth worldwide. Studies conducted in the Republic of Croatia confirm a high prevalence of this phenomenon in high school students with the data showing that almost 92% of young people under the age of 16 have tried some of the alcoholic beverages. The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of beer and spirit drinking among high school students according to gender, type of school, and beer drinking of people closely related to them. The study also explored high school students’ motivation for beer drinking and differences in motivation between genders. The study included 789 students from 2nd and 3rd grades of high schools in Dubrovnik. The results showed that 92% of students have tried alcohol at least once. A higher percentage of male students consumed beer and wine than female students, and when it came to hard liquor, female students drank an equal amount of hard liquor as male students. The students in vocational schools, particularly in three-year programs consume more alcohol than the students from grammar schools. The study showed a correlation between adolescent drinking and drinking habits of people close to them, in particular partners and close friends. The study also showed the link between adolescent drinking and parents’ beer drinking. The most common motivation for drinking beer in adolescents is having fun and relaxing from everyday worries. They drink beer when they feel happy or bored as beer drinking increases their good mood and contributes to feeling relaxed. This study results indicate the need for implementing science-based alcohol use prevention programs and programs of high school students’ mental health promotion. The importance of involving parents in prevention programs, the role of the community in promoting healthy lifestyles and organizing ways of constructive leisure and fun for young people are also emphasized. Key words: adolescents; alcoholic drinks; beer; drinking; motivation

What people drink and where they drink informs us about their personality

Folk wisdom and research on personality inferences suggest one should be able to judge a person's personality based on their behaviour related to alcohol consumption. In a sample of Australians (N = 1,232), we compared the utility of knowing where and what people prefer to consume alcohol to understand people's personality (broadly construed). Where people drank had limited utility; predicting hopelessness in those who drank at home more than at a licensed venue and the consumption of spirits for those high in extraversion at a licensed venue. In contrast, there were several differences in people's personality across drink preferences. For example, neuroticism was higher in cider and spirit drinkers than beer and wine drinkers. Results are framed within the personality inference literature and qualified by (1) the traditional beer-drinking culture of our sample and (2) the complex relationships between personality and any behaviour, including habits surrounding alcohol consumption.

Adapting to lockdown

By mid-April 2020, a third of the global population was under full or partial lockdown. While ‘lockdown’ was not a technical term used by public-health officials, it referred to anything from mandatory geographic quarantines to non- mandatory recommendations to stay at home, closures of certain types of businesses, or bans on events and gatherings. During this lockdown period, the travel sector worldwide continued to experience a loss of business. For example, Spain’s famous annual San Fermin bull-running festival, which usually draws thousands of participants, was canceled because of the coronavirus crisis. “As expected as it was, it still leaves us deeply sad,” said acting mayor Ana Elizalde in a statement from the local Pamplona town hall. The July festival, which was made famous in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, has seldom been canceled in its history. Other major European tourist events were canceled, including Oktoberfest, the famous annual German beer-drinking festival which traditionally sees six million people travel to Munich.

Beer drinking, resistance and the politics of alcohol tax levy in Botswana

Aim: The study investigated how beer drinkers coped, made sense of, and internalised the effects of the 30% alcohol levy implementation in Botswana in 2008. Methods: Constructivist grounded theory guided this study and explored how active beer drinkers ( n = 20) coped with the new alcohol reforms. Results: Beer drinkers resisted the new alcohol reforms through various acts theorised as individualised resistance, social drinking networks and seeking alternative drinking avenues. These resistance(s) are synergistic, fluid and situated. Actions by beer drinkers are culturally framed, enacted through the aegis of time to entrench drinker’s autonomy. Conclusions: The alcohol levy implementation in Botswana illuminates the intersection of power, culture and resistance. Policies that are perceived to be draconian and not evidence-based are likely to be resisted by consumers. An examination of the interplay between power/resistance is critical for future alcohol policy development.

Black Culture, Music, and “Hep Phrasing” Permeated Radio

In 1947, WJBW took a bold move. It began live remotes from a black nightclub, the Dew Drop Inn. In 1949 Vernon Winslow—who would become the city's first full-time black disk jockey at WWEZ—was unsuccessful convincing WJMR's management to hire him as a DJ. The station refused to hire a black man but made Winslow a consultant who created the black trickster character Poppa Stoppa and taught white men to speak in a hip black vernacular. After firing Winslow because he went on air as Poppa Stoppa, the Jax brewery picked him up to expand its black beer drinking market. It contracted with WWEZ for which Winslow created his DJ nickname, Dr. Daddy-O, and operated his new show “Jivin’ with Jax.”

Freedom in the Form of a Boxcar

This chapter recounts the trip that the author and his gutter punk traveling companion, Zeke, took aboard a series of freight trains that carried them far into west Texas. The chapter documents the trip’s many drifting experiences: waiting in railyards, hiding from railroad workers, sleeping in the rain, moving from one train or one rail car to another (hotshots, units, boxcars), ultimately arriving in Pecos, Texas—and along the way getting lost in what gutter punks call “the drift.” Interwoven with this narrative are similar accounts from the long history of hoboing and the more recent history of gutter punk train hopping, along with considerations of particular aspects of such travel: dirt, filth, visibility, and “dirty kid” identity; bandana symbolism; beer drinking; and Railroad Workers United. The chapter ends with the author’s discovery of a bit of graffiti that Zeke has written inside the boxcar in which they are travelling, which says “Freedom in the form of a boxcar.”