Thursday, September 8, 2011

A 4,000 Year Old Pub

On David Beard's Archaeology Blog, I found this link to an article about a find in Scotland that appears to be the site of the oldest pub in Great Britain. It sounds silly, but the information reported about the find to date suggests strongly that the find was a facility for preparing and serving alcoholic beverages and foods suitable to eat with them--though it likely was part of a great chief's holding than what we think of as a commercial business. The Daily Mail article on the find reports:
Experts including Shetland regional archaeologist Val Turner are in no doubt that - pub or not - there was beer being brewed at Jarlshof in the Iron Age. ... The building has a house next door which has a large souterrain - which was the equivalent of a Iron Age refrigerator used for storing smoked or salted meats.
So the place served beer and sausage. Clearly the taste for such a combination goes way, way back in European history.

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