Roughly 4,500 years ago, someone in what is now northeastern Poland brewed an alcoholic drink, poured it into a clay vessel, and carried that vessel to a place where the dead were honored. Thousands of years later, the chemical fingerprints of that act are still locked inside the pottery walls.
A peer-reviewed study published in Archaeometry reports that organic residue analysis of 13 pottery sherds from two ritual sites in Poland’s Podlaskie Voivodeship found fermented alcoholic beverages in at least nine vessels. The sites, Supraśl Site 3 and Skrzeszew Site 49, date to the boundary between the Late Neolithic and the early Bronze Age, placing the residues among the oldest direct evidence of intentional brewing anywhere in Poland or the broader northeastern European region.
What the chemistry reveals
The research team used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), a laboratory technique that separates and identifies molecular compounds absorbed into clay over millennia. By analyzing sherds from funerary and ritual features at both sites, the researchers detected chemical signatures consistent with fermented beverages they described as “beer-like or complex mixtures.” In practical terms, GC-MS can distinguish fermentation byproducts from residues left by animal fats, plant waxes, or unfermented foods, making it a reliable tool for confirming that alcohol was deliberately produced rather than the result of accidental spoilage.
Nine positive results out of 13 tested sherds is a notably high ratio. In archaeological residue studies, that kind of consistency within a targeted sample typically signals a repeated, patterned practice rather than a one-off event. The pottery came from specific ritual features: Features 1 through 2 and 5 through 6 at Supraśl Site 3, and Feature 1 at Skrzeszew Site 49.
Ritual sites, not ordinary campsites
Both locations have been recognized by archaeologists as specialized ritual places rather than typical settlements. Prof. Dariusz Manasterski of the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Warsaw leads the excavation at Supraśl Site 3, which contains Bell Beaker ritual features, a category of archaeological evidence tied to the Bell Beaker cultural phenomenon that spread across much of Western and Central Europe between roughly 2800 and 1800 BCE.
Peer-reviewed publications, including a study in the European Journal of Archaeology, describe the deposits at these sites as both ritual and funerary in nature. Alongside the pottery sherds, excavators have recovered burnt human and animal remains, amber, and exotic flint, materials that point to elaborate ceremonies drawing on goods from distant sources. Cremation deposits, structured object placements, and repeated use of the same spots all suggest carefully staged events, not casual gatherings. Alcohol, in this context, appears to have functioned as one element in a suite of high-value substances deployed during ceremonies that marked death, burial, and social bonding.
The presence of Bell Beaker ritual features at the eastern periphery of the Bell Beaker world is itself significant. Northeastern Poland in this period was home to communities that were primarily hunter-gatherers, people who had not fully adopted farming or metallurgy. Yet they selectively took up certain Bell Beaker practices, including distinctive pottery styles and, as the new residue data shows, brewing. That selective adoption suggests these groups were active participants in long-distance exchange networks, choosing which cultural elements to integrate rather than passively receiving a complete package.
What remains uncertain
Several important questions are still open. The Archaeometry study does not break down, in publicly available summaries, how the nine alcohol-bearing vessels are distributed between Supraśl and Skrzeszew. Whether the positive results cluster at one site or spread across both matters: a concentration at Supraśl would strengthen its interpretation as a dedicated ritual center, while a more even spread might indicate broader, community-level brewing across the region.
The chronological framing also carries ambiguity. Northeastern Poland sat at the transition between the Late Neolithic and the early Bronze Age, and pinning the pottery firmly to one side of that divide changes the narrative. A Late Neolithic date would mean hunter-gatherers brewed alcohol independently or through cultural contact with Bell Beaker groups. An early Bronze Age date could tie the practice more closely to incoming agricultural traditions and the social hierarchies that often accompanied them.
Ingredient identification is another gap. The study’s description of “beer-like or complex mixtures” does not specify whether the base was barley, wheat, honey, fruit, or some combination. That distinction matters: cereals would hint at cultivated fields or traded grain, while fruit or honey would fit more naturally within a foraging economy. Without that breakdown, direct comparison to beer traditions documented elsewhere in prehistoric Europe is difficult.
How this fits the global picture
The Polish finds are not the world’s oldest evidence of fermented beverages. Residues from Jiahu in China, dating to around 7000 BCE, and from Hajji Firuz in Iran, dating to roughly 5400 BCE, hold that distinction by a wide margin. But the Supraśl and Skrzeszew results fill a specific gap: they represent the earliest confirmed brewing in Poland and push the regional timeline for intentional fermentation back into a phase when mobile or semi-mobile groups still relied heavily on wild resources.
That timing challenges a long-standing assumption. In much of Europe, alcohol production has been linked to the emergence of settled farming communities with surplus grain. The northeastern Polish evidence suggests a different pathway, one in which fermentation technology traveled along the same exchange networks that carried amber westward and flint tools eastward, reaching communities that had not adopted the full agricultural package. Rather than a byproduct of surplus, alcohol here looks like a deliberate, socially meaningful technology woven into ceremonies that bridged the worlds of the living and the dead.
What further analysis could resolve
Future work targeting additional sherds, including those from outside obvious ritual features, could clarify how deeply brewing was embedded in daily life versus reserved for ceremony. More precise radiocarbon dating of the features themselves would help resolve the Late Neolithic versus early Bronze Age question. And detailed ingredient analysis, potentially using techniques like starch grain identification or pollen analysis alongside GC-MS, could finally reveal what these ancient brewers were fermenting.
For now, the nine positive vessels from Supraśl and Skrzeszew stand as concrete evidence that 4,500 years ago, people in northeastern Poland were not just drinking alcohol but producing it as part of rituals that connected them to one of prehistoric Europe’s most far-reaching cultural networks. The chemistry sealed inside those clay walls has outlasted the brewers, the mourners, and the dead they honored, and it is only now beginning to speak.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
