Brewing Stones.

Geir Grønnesby, an archaeologist at the NTNU University Museum, has buckets full of rocks that have been used to brew beer since the Viking age. They’re found in buried rubbish heaps around many farms in Trøndelag. Photo: Nancy Bazilchuk.

When archaeologist Geir Grønnesby dug test pits at 24 different farms in central Norway, he nearly always found thick layers of fire-cracked stones dating from the Viking Age and earlier. Carbon-14 dating of this evidence tells us that long ago, Norwegians brewed beer using stones.

[…]

In other words, “most of the archaeological information we have about the Viking Age comes from graves, and most of the archaeological information about the Middle Ages comes from excavations in cities,” Grønnesby said. That’s a problem because “most people lived in the countryside.”

Essentially, he says, Norwegian farms are sitting on an enormous underground treasure trove that in places dates from the AD 600, the late Iron Age — and yet they are mostly untouched.

“So I started doing these small excavations to look for cultural layers in farmyards,” he said. “The oldest carbon-14 dates I found are from 600 AD, and all the dates are from this time or later. And when I found the stones, I had to write about them, since there were so many.”

[…]

Grønnesby is not the first to remark on fire-cracked stones on farms in central Norway. That distinction goes to a pioneering sociologist named Eilert Sundt, who recorded an encounter on a farm in 1851 in Hedmark.

As Sundt later wrote, he was walking and saw a farmer near a pile of strange-looking, smallish stones.

“What’s with these stones?” he asked the farmer, pointing to the pile. “They’re brewing stones,” the farmer told him. “Stones they used for cooking to brew beer — from the old days when they didn’t have iron pots.”

In his article, Sundt noted that most of the farms he visited had piles of burned or fire-cracked stones. Every time he asked about them, the answer was the same: they were from brewing, when the stones were heated until they were “glowing hot” and then plopped into wooden vessels to heat things up. The stones were so omnipresent, Sundt wrote, and so thick and compact in places that houses were built right on top of them.

Reports from archaeologists who examined farmsteads in more recent times also confirm this observation. When one archaeologist dug a test trench in the 1980s at a farm in Steinkjer, north of Trondheim, he found a cultural layer more than a metre thick, much of which was fire-cracked stone.

[…]

Grønnesby says the presence of great numbers of brewing stones on Norwegian farms underscores the cultural importance of beer itself.

“Beer drinking was an important part of social and religious institutions,” he said.

For example, the Gulating, a Norwegian parliamentary assembly that met from 900 to 1300 AD, regulated even the smallest details of beer brewing and drinking at that time.

The Gulating’s laws required three farmers to work together to brew beer, which then had to be blessed. An individual who failed to brew beer for three consecutive years had to give half his farm to the bishop and the other half to the King and then leave the country. Only very small farms were exempt from this strict regulation.

What’s equally interesting is when brewing stones disappear from cultural layers — at about 1500, right around the time of the Reformation.

“It could just be a strange coincidence,” Grønnesby said. “It could be religion. Or it could be that iron vessels were more widely available by then.”

Some of the best archaeological finds come from rubbish heaps. Throughout mid-Norway, these rubbish heaps often contain cracked stones that have been used to brew beer. Photo: Åge Hojem, NTNU University Museum.

…You can read about Grønnesby’s research in the recently published book, “The Agrarian Life of the North: 2000 BC to AD 1000: Studies in Rural Settlement and Farming in Norway”, edited by Frode Iversen & Håkan Petersson. Grønnesby’s chapter is entitled “Hot Rocks! Beer Brewing on Viking and Medieval Age Farms in Trøndelag.”

Fascinating reading! Medievalists Net has the full story.

The Birth of Milk Bones.

Spratt’s ad, c. 1876 Public Domain.

The first dog biscuits did not resemble the bone-shaped delights of today. Developed by James Spratt in 1860, these so-called Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes were woefully square.

Spratt, an American electrician, came up with the idea for a dog biscuit after he witnessed sailors dropping hardtack—an unleavened bread—for the local dogs. He decided he could do the same—and monetize it. His flagship company, Spratt’s, was founded soon after. Their lead product, the Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes, were developed from a combination of wheat, beetroot, vegetables, and prairie meat. (The particular kind of meat in Spratt’s formula was apparently highly confidential; until his death, Spratt “kept in his hands the contract for his meat supplier.”)

At the time, the concept of a food specifically for dogs was alien. According to Katherine C. Grier, author of Pets in America, “until well into the 20th century, most household dogs lived off scraps from the kitchen, often cooked with a starch into something that people called ‘dog stew.’” But by the late 1800s, Spratt’s had shuttled dog biscuits into the mainstream—especially for dog show contestants. In 1895, the New York Times labeled Spratt’s a “principal food” of dog shows.

Spratt’s success soon spawned competition.

Over a decade later, in 1907, organic chemist Carleton Ellis received an urgent request. The owner of a local slaughterhouse was having problems with all of his excess “waste milk,” and he wanted Ellis to help him find a use for it. Ellis would eventually accrue over 753 inventions to his name and would serve as the force behind the creation of margarine, polyester, paint and varnish remover, and anti-knock gasoline. If he found the milk request odd, he did not show it. He agreed to help.

Likely inspired by Spratt’s, Ellis decided to turn the waste into food for his dog. After some experimentation, Ellis mixed the excess milk with malt, grain, and other products to form a dog biscuit—baked into what he assumed would be an appealing, rounded shape.

But when he tested the biscuits, his dog refused to eat them.

Ellis was frustrated. Clearly, the biscuit should have tasted great to a dog. He was a MIT graduate; he knew perhaps more than anyone at the time about the compounds in petroleums, oils, and varnishes. He had authored such dense, technical manuals as Hydrogenation of Oils Catalyze and The Chemical Action of Ultraviolet Rays for biscuit’s sake! Developing a treat that a dog would eat should not have provided this much of a challenge.

So he decided to do something strange: he changed the design of the biscuit rather than the ingredients. “I had some more biscuits baked from the same stock, but in the shape of a bone,” he told Popular Science in 1937, “and I found that my dog manifested a tremendous interest in the bone-shaped biscuit.”

You can read more about the origin of milk bones here. Oddly enough, I’ve always ended up with dogs who have never been terribly interested in Milk Bones.

The Puritan Dress Code.

Anne Hutchinson. Puritan dissident.

In 1676, Hannah Lyman was in trouble. She was among three dozen or so young women who had been summoned to court: They had flouted the laws of the colony of Connecticut by wearing silken hoods. Among these “overdressed” women, Lyman was, apparently, the most rebellious and strong-willed. She appeared in court wearing the very silk hood that she had been indicted for donning.

The judge was, predictably, not very happy. He accused her of “wearing silk in a flaunting manner, in an offensive way, not only before but when she stood presented” at court. She and the other young women were fined for their offensive sartorial choices.

It’s quite interesting, visualizing just how one would wear a silk hood in an offensive manner. This is obviously projection writ large, but many of the puritan sentiments are still with us, to a very deep degree. Consider how many people refer to something like silk sheets as terribly decadent, something only people of a very weak nature would indulge in, and so forth. We won’t even get into silk underwear. (Pardon, pardon, couldn’t help it.) To the puritans, silk spoke of degeneracy, a terrible flaw in one’s moral framework. All these centuries later, I can feel for Ms. Lyman, who probably just wanted to enjoy her silken hood.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony passed its first law limiting the excesses of dress in 1634, when it prohibited citizens from wearing “new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature.” That meant no silver or gold hatbands, girdles, or belts, and no cloth woven with gold thread or lace. It was also forbidden to create clothes with more than two slashes in the sleeves (a style meant to reveal one’s rich and fancy undergarments). Anyone who wore such items would have to forfeit them if caught.

I can’t help but wonder just who got those “forfeited” clothes. Not that some higher up puritan would be able to wear them outside their own house, but I can imagine some scenes going on behind closed doors. Puritans were very serious about ornamentation of all kinds though, and that extended to things like christmas:

You’ll note in the above: “dressing in Fine Clothing”, with the stress of capital letters.

For decades the colony continued to refine these laws. In 1639, the colony instituted a stricter law against lace and forbade clothes with short sleeves. In the 1650s, the law became more class-conscious. Only those who had more than 200 pounds to their estates were allowed to wear gold and silver buttons and knee points, or great boots, silk hoods, or silk scarves. Exempt from the rule were magistrates and public officers, their wives and children, as well as militia officers or soldiers, and anyone else whose with advanced education or employment, or “whose estate have been considerable, though now decayed.” In 1679, the colony also started worrying about hair, since “there is manifest pride openly appearing among us by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair.”

Oh my, how things never, ever change. The rich are different, because money allows them to be. It’s interesting to see the nod to decayed estates, there’s a bit of classism at its very finest. Naturally, those wealthy puritans had to have some way to distinguish themselves, one might say a way to flaunt their wealth. No point in having position and money if you can’t separate yourself from the puritan rabble. The hypocrisy of those who always make a claim to the highest of moral grounds is breathtakingly blatant.

Massachusetts and Connecticut were not the only colonies to pass such laws. In New Jersey, by 1670, it was illegal for a woman to “betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s male subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips.” And if they did? The marriage would be “null and void.” Oh, and they would be punished exactly as if they had been convicted of witchcraft or sorcery.

Oh my, my, my. Betray into marriage. That’s pretty strong language, and it would be very nice if that sentiment was one that was long lost to the mists of time. Unfortunately, it isn’t at all lost, and it’s a frequent cry of complaint among MRAs. When it comes to personal ornamentation, women can never win. If we have the nerve to wander about sans cosmetics, there are complaints. If we use cosmetics, there are complaints. And there are never ending complaints about dress, of course. “Too sexy!” “Too distracting!” “Slutty!” “Drab.” “Uninteresting.” “Slovenly.” And so on and on and on it goes. Anyroad, looking at the above list, all I can say is I’m beyond grateful I didn’t live in an age where iron stays were obligatory.

Atlas Obscura has the full run down on puritanical clothing codes.

Word Wednesday.

Concupiscent

Adjective.

Concupiscence, noun: strong desire; especially: sexual desire.

Concupiscent, adjective.

[Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin concupiscentia, from Latin concupiscent-, concupiscens, present participle of concupiscere to desire ardently, from com– + cupere to desire.]

(14th Century)

It wasn’t like an apple, or any crisp fruit, where you might sink your teeth in and lever a piece away from the orb. She bit through, faint resistance of the skin and then concupiscent flesh. Juice slicked her cheeks and chin, coursed down her forearm, dripped from her elbow. The flavor was—intense. Honeyed, but not cloying, complex and buoyant. – Dust, Elizabeth Bear.

No Worries, “God” Will Heal All Diseases.

Jehovah Drowns People For No Good Reason. Gustave Doré.

Gordon Klingenschmitt is having another rant, this time about Planned Parenthood, what else. If Planned Parenthood is killed off, well then Jehovah will be all happy, and heal all diseases. He uses a passage from Exodus for this reasoning:

15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

I’ve always had a particular loathing for the story of the Egyptians in Exodus, it’s a stark illustration of the psychopathic nature of Jehovah. When I was a child, I never could get past the “hardening of the heart” business. It was clear to me, even at a young age that this was a particularly nasty, sleazy cheat. As Steve Wells points out*:

So Moses rounded up all three million or so Israelites, their flocks, herds, cattle, unleavened bread, and all the silver, gold, and clothes that they could steal from the Egyptians and left town.  [See Exodus 12.34-38] And everything would have ended happily ever after, too, if God could have resisted the temptation to harden the Pharaoh’s heart a few more times. You see, the Pharaoh’s heart was just too damned soft to suit God. So he set about hardening it a bit more. (He had to harden it 8 times to pull off his last killing.) (14.4, 14.8, 14.17-18.)

Now, there is a bit more about medical care in the bible, which Gordon has conveniently neglected:

16:12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

16:13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

See? Don’t go to doctors, ever! Doctors are awful, and you’ll die. You just need to pray, have faith, or touch the right religious leader’s hankie. There’s nothing at all about Planned Parenthood, or idiots who think terminating a pregnancy is the same as infanticide.

Part of Gordon’s little rant here:

“You know what the solution to America’s healthcare crisis is?” Klingenschmitt asked. “Obey the Ten Commandments, stop funding abortion, stop funding child killing and God will heal your diseases, America. The supernatural blessing of healing is available if we stop working with the demonic spirit of murder.”

Klingenschmitt proclaimed that if America were to repent for the sin of abortion, then “we would receive [God’s] healing and wouldn’t need to rely on socialist healthcare.”

The problem there, Gordon, is that I don’t believe in your psychopathic god, and I don’t care one whit about that evil creature, who is the obvious villain in every story. So, even if we were to pretend Jehovah existed, that would make me one of the Egyptians in his eyes, so I wouldn’t come in for that wondrous healing of all diseases. It would be lovely if you fucking idiots could figure out that not everyone in this mess of a country are christian, and that many of us have zero interest in becoming one.

*I receive no monies from Amazon.

Via Right Wing Watch.

Delicious Nudes.

Rather than fixating on the clothing or obsessing over the figure, the French fashion photographer Marwane Pallas places a special emphasis on the external objects within the frame. Props within the scene that would normally serve a supporting role are given equivalent degrees of attention to the standard “centerpieces” of the fashion photos.

You can see much more of Marwane Pallas’s work, and read more at The Creators Project, Marwane Pallas’s website, or instagram.

The Hunt for Bannon le Napoleon.

A new profile on Steve Bannon published yesterday by New York Magazine reveals that the White House Chief Strategist and former executive chair of Breitbart News was gifted his own version of Jacques-Louis David’s famous portrait, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries (1812), by British Politician and known Trump supporter, Nigel Farage.

David painted two versions of this famed neoclassical painting. One currently hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the other is at Versailles. The hunt is now on to find an image of Bannon’s version. Green took to Twitter to call onWashington Post reporter and CNN contributor David Fahrenthold to help him find a copy of this masterpiece. Fahrenthold posted a tweet challenging his 434,000 followers to find the painting and Green offered a free copy of his new book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency. News of Bannon’s portrait is spreading like wildfire across Twitter, with imaginative Photoshopped versions coming in every hour.

Via The Creators Project.

On The Hunt.

Today sees a need to hunt for a refrigerator, to replace my beloved early 1950s Philco, which is far from dead, but the latch is failing, and I’ve recently had to turn it up to ‘2’, which used to freeze everything solid. Ours is one of the odd ones, with the latch on the right, opening to the left. Almost all the Philcos had their latches on the left, unless it was the marvelous V version, which opened from either side.

I won’t be able to part with it; I’ll set it up in my studio as art supply storage. As it’s metal, the rats will leave it be. All the inside racks and such are a translucent aqua blue, kinda spectacular. So, off to find a small, absolutely no frills fridge, I’m hoping to be able to find one without a freezer, as we have a late 1940s Zenith chest freezer which is unbelievably huge.