Revealing invisible brews: a new approach to the chemical identification of ancient beer

While ancient Near Eastern cuneiform texts and iconography unambiguously demonstrate the social, economic, and ritual significance of beer, direct archaeological evidence for beer production or consumption remains surprisingly rare. This scarcity of material evidence renders it difficult to extrapolate information about the ingredients and production processes of beer, on the one hand, and the paraphernalia and social contexts of its consumption, on the other. In recent decades, organic residue analysis has become an essential tool in the identification of ancient alcoholic beverages, but research on Near Eastern beer has focused largely on production and storage vessels, whose form, archaeological context, and associated macroscopic residues already indicated their use in beer production. In this paper, we present a novel field sampling protocol that prevents contamination along with a refined organic residue analysis methodology that relies on a series of co-occurring compounds to identify confidently beer in ceramic vessels. The same compounds were identified in several modern beer samples and, thus, support our identification of a similar fermented barley-based beverage in archaeological samples from the late second millennium BCE site of Khani Masi in northeastern Iraq. The results presented in this paper allow us, for the first time, to unambiguously link a diverse range of vessel types to the consumption and production of beer, identify a fundamental change in Mesopotamian consumption practices, and shed light on the cultural dimensions of Babylonia's encounter with the Zagros-Mesopotamian borderlands

Phase Coherence and Control of Stored Photonic Information

We report the demonstration of phase coherence and control for the recently developed "light storage" technique. Specifically, we use a pulsed magnetic field to vary the phase of atomic spin excitations which result from the deceleration and storing of a light pulse in warm Rb vapor. We then convert the spin excitations back into light and detect the resultant phase shift in an optical interferometric measurement. The coherent storage of photon states in matter is essential for the practical realization of many basic concepts in quantum information processing.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Learning verbs more effectively through meaning congruent action animations

Item does not contain fulltextThe current study investigates the effectiveness of learning words while displaying meaning congruent animations. We explore whether learning words with animation is sensitive to properties known to influence action understanding. We apply an embodied cognition framework and predictions from a recent theory about language and action (Action-Based Language theory, Glenberg & Gallese, 2012). The current study aims to investigate whether dynamic animations add to word learning (Experiment 1) and what the linguistic relation between the dynamic animation and the word learning is (Experiment 2). Results indicate that meaning congruent animations improved verb learning compared to meaning incongruent animations when measured by a recognition task. When measured by an active recall task, congruent animations led to better learning than static pictures. In both measures, meaning congruent animations support word learning. Experiment 2 replicates and extends this and suggests that highlighting conceptual information related to the dynamic action (such as the goal) improves word learning further. The findings are in line with Action-Based Language theory, which suggests that children are able to make better simulations of an action during learning when supported by meaning congruent animations. Highlighting conceptual information additionally supports this learning process.16 p

Excavations at Tell Brak 2006-2007

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