Tate Paulette

Photo showing a hand holding a copy of the book Historical Brewing Techniques by Lars Marius Garshol. In the background, a residential street in Raleigh, North Carolina

A little present to myself for the first day of the Fall semester. Looking forward to digging into this detailed account of farmhouse brewing traditions by @larsga.bsky.social

RBmedia | In the Land of Ninkasi Listen to the audiobook In the Land of Ninkasi, written by Tate Paulette, narrated by Ryan Lee Dunlap.

The audiobook version of In the Land of Ninkasi (read by Ryan Lee Dunlop) will be released on August 26. Available now for pre-order.

rbmediaglobal.com/audiobook/97...

Yes, he has led me to many wonderful books/authors, including both of those, though I haven't finished Peregrine yet

Yes, we did, and yes I have! I loved Waterlog and also found it via @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social. I’m reading Deakin’s Wildwood now

Photo showing a man walking on pebbles alongside a mountain creek in dappled sunlight with large boulders, a small waterfall, green forest, and mist rising in the distance

Photo showing a man diving into a mountain creek in dappled sunlight with large boulders, a small waterfall, green forest, and mist rising in the distance

Photo showing a man diving (only his feet visible, the rest of his body submerged) into a mountain creek in dappled sunlight with large boulders, a small waterfall, green forest, and mist rising in the distance

Another beautiful and bracing swim at the creek today with my brother. We explored maybe 15 small pools and waterfalls heading upstream from this spot (“the Fork”) in two directions. The water was relatively high and the creek rambunctious, thanks to a rainy past few days

Photo showing a person’s hand holding a copy of Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive above a creek in the North Carolina mountains, with large boulders, two small waterfalls, and green forest in the background

Yes! This little river is alive. My brother Kent and I have been reading @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s wonderful book “Is a River Alive” in parallel and got to chat about it together yesterday mid-creek

Sunday evening walkies with @kategrossman.bsky.social and the floofs at Hemlock Bluffs Nature Preserve in Cary, NC

Here you can see students at Yale doing something similar. babylonian-collection.yale.edu/about/babylo...

Not in these particular texts from Girsu, but, yes, there are Mesopotamian recipes for breads, soups, etc. For the moment, I’m just focusing on the beer, but I do assign my students a Mesopotamian cooking project where they divide into groups and try out some of those other recipes.

Yes, we did taste all the different varieties––made with different sourdough starters, fed with wheat flour vs. malted barley, dried at different temperatures. They were all interesting but pretty tangy, not really something I would want to eat in any quantity.

Photo showing a lake bordered by trees, just after sunset, with a cloudy sky (and mirrored lake surface) fading from bright orange to grayish purple

Rode my bike over to Lake Raleigh this evening and caught a beautiful sunset.

Hamilakis, Y. 2026. Archaeology as a hauntology of remains. In Shadow Archaeologies In the Shadow of Antiquity or For Other Modes of Archaeological Worldmaking, edited by A. Nativ and G. Lucas. London... In this chapter, I propose a hauntological archaeology, not as a subdiscipline, a subfield, or a method but as an affect, as a way of allowing or rather enabling material remains to haunt us. This is ...

Archaeology defined as a hauntology of remains. A theoretical statement grounded on my work on ruins as well as my recent work on the remnants of contemporary migration. Part of a great volume! Grateful to the editors and to many colleagues who helped out!

www.academia.edu/143309448/Ha...

Both beers are already happily bubbling away. Relieved to see that my experimental bappir (dried out sourdough starter) is doing what it’s meant to do.

Photo showing an open book (In the Land of Ninkasi), a brewing plan for a golden and a dark beer, an empty bag of malted barley from Epiphany Craft Malt, and a table full of bappir cakes.

Photo showing two beer kegs, one labeled “dark” and one labeled”golden.”

Was fun to see the Sumerian ingredient lists from my book transformed into a brewing plan and to crumble up my experimental bappir (dried out sourdough cakes), soak it briefly, and add it to the wort to start fermentation.

Brew day was a success. We made a “golden” beer and a “dark” beer, both based on ingredient lists preserved on cuneiform tablets from the city of Girsu (c. 2400 BC). Here we’re smoking malted barley over poplar to create our interpretation of an ingredient known as titab in Sumerian.

Photo showing large bowls full of actively fermenting sourdough

Photo showing three experimental loaves of bappir

Photo showing a dehydrator full of small experimental cakes of bappir

Gearing up to brew some Mesopotamian beer, so I’ve turned our kitchen into a production facility for bappir—an enigmatic ingredient that might have been a dried out sourdough starter. Got advice and starters from a team of sourdough specialists at NC State and have been testing out drying methods.

Barry Cunliffe, The Scythians
Martyn Rady, The Middle Kingdoms
@tatepaulette.bsky.social In the Land of Ninkasi
@sarahebond.bsky.social Strike

CHASS Faculty Examine Food’s Moral, Social and Cultural Impact Four faculty members from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences explore how food connects to larger cultural, social and ethical questions.

This article highlights the research of four NCSU professors who use food to explore a range of topics including our very own Tate Paulette, an associate professor of history, discusses his work on ancient Mesopotamian beer culture. You can read the full article here:
chass.ncsu.edu/news/2025/07...

Episode #287 - A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia with Dr. Tate Paulette Podcast Episode · The Two Cities · 07/23/2025 · 1h 4m

Thanks to The Two Cities podcast for inviting me to chat about beer in ancient Mesopotamia. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Digging into history in Cyprus! The Makounta-Voules Archaeological Project (MVAP) just wrapped up excavating a prehistoric cemetery in western Cyprus. Our field school gave students hands-on archaeology training, plus lectures and field trips to amazing sites and museums.

Thanks to all of our students and staff for a successful 2025 field season at Makounta-Voules-Mersinoudia in western Cyprus. @kategrossman.bsky.social

Photo showing Exeter Cathedral at twilight

Photo in a pub showing a book, a pint of cask ale, and a candle in a wine bottle sitting on a wooden table

Lovely quick visit to Exeter to give the keynote lecture for a conference on “The Deities and their Drinks.” Now back to Cyprus for the final weeks of our field season.

Photo showing Exeter Cathedral at twilight

Photo in a pub showing a book, a pint of cask ale, and a candle in a wine bottle sitting on a wooden table

Lovely quick visit to Exeter to give the keynote lecture for a conference on “The Deities and their Drinks.” Now back to Cyprus for the final weeks of our field season.

Photo showing close-up of bookshelf in the “Technology—Ancient” section at the CAARI library in Nicosia, highlighting the book In the Land of Ninkasi by Tate Paulette.

Photo showing bookshelves, large tables, and rolling ladders in the CAARI library in Nicosia

Happy to run into my book on the shelves at the @caari-cyprus.bsky.social library

Photo showing a group of students and archaeological field school staff sitting at a long table enjoying a Syrian meze

Introducing a new crop of field school students to the joys of Syrian food at the Syrian Club in Nicosia with @kategrossman.bsky.social

Everything I read in the month of June, including a little speculative fiction and a lot of nonfiction.

joshuapnudell.com/2025/07/01/j...

Thanks for the kind words about my book (… and for taking me up on the suggestion to read it with beer in hand). I’m glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks to Melania Zingarello for this review of my book in @antiquity.ac.uk.