Ancient Substances

Abstract

The two volumes reviewed here examine specific plants and fungi that humans used in the past and present and that are either psychoactive (they alter the perceptions of the user) or “heighten sensory experience and amplify the perceived properties of things” (Marcy Norton, foreword to Schwartzkopf and Sampeck). These substances are ingested in some way, but they are not dietary staples. There is some overlap in the substances investigated in both volumes, except for sugar, which is not psychoactive, but is examined in the Schwartzkopf and Sampeck volume as a seductive substance. Both volumes are derived from symposia at professional meetings, the Fitzpatrick volume from the 2012 meetings of the Society for American Archaeology and the Schwartzkopf/Sampeck volume from the 2014 meetings of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Ancient Psychoactive Substances is concerned principally with documenting the origin and historical use of a wide range of mind-altering plants and fungi by humans around the world based largely on archaeological data. Fitzpatrick and Mark Merlin note in their introduction that there is a growing preference for using the term “entheogen” for these substances because they often result in people perceiving their effects “as generating a deity or supernatural force within those who consume them” as “plants of the gods” (p. 2). The Schwartzkopf and Sampeck volume also notes this property of certain plants and fungi. It has been difficult to identify the early use of psychoactive substances because of their poor preservation in the archaeological record, which has forced researchers to rely on indirect evidence from artifacts or iconographic evidence. Fortunately, there have been major advances in a variety of analytical methods in recent years, and much of the evidence presented throughout the volume benefits from new collection strategies and new techniques of laboratory analyses, including DNA, phytochemical analysis, and organic residue analysis using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The introduction to Ancient Psychoactive Substances provides a comprehensive overview of when and how numerous psychoactive substances came to be used by humans in the Old and New Worlds. It also includes an analysis of the chemical constituents of these substances and their effects on humans, which helps explain why many of them were used in certain ways. Many of the plants and fungi have multiple uses, including as food and medicine, in addition to spiritual, ritual, and ceremonial uses. The 11 chapters that follow focus on certain times and/or places when they were used. Merlin and Robert Clarke examine Cannabis use across Eurasia, speculating that it was used for millennia as fiber, for its edible seeds and oil, and presumably for its mind-altering properties. A major focus of this chapter is on ritualistic funerary use of the plant in the first millennium BCE. Evidence suggests that fumes were inhaled, although it also was eaten, and that smoking Cannabis may not have become common until tobacco was introduced from the New World. In her chapter on psychoactive substances in the eastern Mediterranean—mainly Bronze Age Cyprus —Zuzana Chovanec demonstrates the importance of chemical characterization research using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. Whereas the use of intoxicants in the region has long been recognized, this research has identified the consumption not only