Ancient brewery found

Archaeologists have discovered a big, ancient brewery in Cerro Baúl, Peru, a mountaintop citadel where two major kingdoms interacted in a relationship that contributed to the later rise of the Incan Empire. The two kingdoms, the Wari and Tiwanaku, cooperated peacefully for about 400 years until about 1000 A.D., when both collapsed.

Archaeologist Ryan Williams of the Field Museum of Chicago sent out an email this week describing how his workers uncovered the brewery in old building whose walls had collapsed in the desert winds.

“We are now at the midpoint of our excavation season, and anticipation is growing,” he writes. Excavations of one building with a collapsed wall have revealed the structure’s most recent Wari occupation area, he adds.

“As we slowly removed the last of the wall collapse, a dark mottled black and gray surface appears.  Along the northern wall, 12 large stones thrust into the floor sit upright.  This surface represents the remnants of the final Wari occupation of the mountain.  The dark black stains on the floor are the remains of the final fires that burned in this room 1000 years ago.

“Between the line of upright stones and the north wall, a thick whitish-gray ash lies in the shadows.  The ash was formed by burning trash and dung in several open fire pits along this wall.  Broken shards of several large ceramic vats were mixed in with the wall fall above this floor.  As we excavate into this ash, several fire pits along the wall begin to take form.  Each one sits between two of the upright stones and the wall.  We now begin to piece together the fragments of the puzzle.

“This room was an ancient brewery!  The broken fragments of ceramics were large boiling vats that sat between a pair of stones and the wall.  Underneath each vessel, a hot fire fueled with guinea pig droppings, llama dung, and trash heated the liquids in the vats.  Boiling fruits or grains is the first step in the preparation of chicha, an alcoholic beverage similar to beer.  Like the mash created in the beer brewing process, the boiling vats contained the sugary mass that would be converted to alcohol in the fermentation stage.  From these boiling vats, the liquid would be transferred to fermenting jars where it was converted into chicha.

“The scale of production in this building with multiple fires and vats, indicates that this was no simple home brewing enterprise.  It was an elaborate, large-scale brewery that produced massive amounts of chicha.  Since this multi-room complex contains no evidence for daily household activity and everything was related to chicha production, we can infer that it was a specialized production center.

“As we continue our excavations in this complex, we will learn more about the scale of production on the mountain summit.  We hope to learn more about the process of chicha production and how it fit into the political life of Wari lords on Cerro Baúl.”

—EJL