ABSTRACT
Intoxicating substances have been used throughout the world since ancient times. The Old World is no exception, but the evidence seems unusually scattered and uneven. Accident of discovery is one explanation for this discrepancy, the relative dearth of pollen core studies and residue analyses may be another, but a general lack of awareness about the range of available psychotropic plants, their characteristic features and methods of preparation is also a contributing factor. This chapter begins with a few methodological considerations concerning the archeology of psychoactive plants and then focusses on some of the lesser-known botanical evidence from the ancient world. I touch upon alcohol made from plants other than cereals (beer) and grapes (wine), the use of additives to spike “mother-brews” and the role of harmel, coriander, darnel and ephedra, whose intoxicating properties tend to be ignored or underestimated. The subject is vast but I hope that this selection of observations will be useful to scholars of the ancient world in their interpretation of the botanical data.
