CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND—According to a BBC report, archaeologists have identified traces of the earliest known beer brewing in Britain during construction work on the A14 highway between the city of Cambridge and the market town of Huntingdon. They discovered tiny fragments of charred grains and bran dating as far back as 400 B.C. that, when analyzed under a microscope, exhibited signs of having gone through a fermentation process. The absence of fine flour among the fragments suggests the fragments are the residue of a beer-making process rather than the remnants of bread baking. A team of more than 200 excavators from Museum of London Archaeology Headland Infrastructure is at work on the massive A14 project, investigating 33 sites across nearly 900 acres. To read more about the archaeology of ancient brewing, go to “Letter from Ireland: Mystery of the Fulacht Fiadh.”
