Mark Pendergrast published a book titled "Uncommon Grounds: The Secret History of Coffee" that would be pertinent as background information for any study of coffee in the archaeological record. The book is an easy read, but is packed with global information on the history of coffee and coffee drinking.

Pat Garrow


-----Original Message-----
>From: "Veit, Richard" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Nov 6, 2013 4:11 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Coffee beans in the archaeological record
>
>Hi Karen and other Histarch folks,
>
>  19th century deposits at the Peace Tavern in Rahway, NJ contained coffee beans--I would estimate hundreds but my colleague Adam Heinrich would have more exact counts.
>
>All the best,
>
>Rich Veit
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
>Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 4:07 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Fwd: Coffee beans in the archaeological record
>
> The information below is from Aimee Bouzigard, who wrote her dissertation on tobacco and coffee in Ottoman Arabia and is also contributing an entry on coffee to The Archaeology of Food, an encyclopedia that Mary Beaudry and I are editing for AltaMira Press.
>
> 
>
>
>Dr. Karen Metheny
>Visiting Researcher, Department of Archaeology Boston University
> 
>
> 
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bouzigard, Aimee <[log in to unmask]>
>To: Metheny, Karen B <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Wed, Nov 6, 2013 3:08 pm
>Subject: RE: Release form for entry in The Archaeology of Food encyclopedia
>
>
>Hello,
>I am not on the list. There have been cases where coffee beans were recovered archaeologically. As far as I can tell, coffee beans have been preserved and recovered from mainly the following site types: burned structures, shipwrecks, and privies. At the Telco site in Lower Manhattan, archaeologists recovered thousands of coffee beans from the basement of a coffee merchant's building that burned in 1816 (Cordell et al. 2008: 123  "Archaeology in America: An Encyclopedia" http://books.google.com/books?id=arfWRW5OFVgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=archaeology+in+america&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FZx6UpT7DMjbkQeGl4D4Cw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=coffee%20beans&f=false). 
>A few coffee beans have also been found in the South Ferry Project in Manhattan by MTA archaeologists (http://www.mta.info/capconstr/sft/archaeology.htm). 
>Timothy Insoll (2003: 71) in his  book "The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa" reports coffee beans being recovered from a mosque at Amud in a 2m-deep cistern (http://books.google.com/books?id=frC8SAu9QxQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=archaeology+of+islam&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YZx6UqeVE4-HkQf_1YDgCw&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=coffee%20beans&f=false). 
>Cheryl Ward found coffee beans during her study of the Sadana Island shipwreck in the Red Sea (http://www.adventurecorps.com/sadana/index.html).  Coffee beans were also recovered  from the Steamboat Arabia shipwreck in Missouri (http://www.examiner.com/article/steamboat-arabia-museum-kansas-city-honors-mule-that-sank-with-steamboat-1856). 
>During an archaeological survey at Ashland, the estate of politician, farmer, and horse breeder Henry Clay in Lexington, Kentucky, historic archaeologists discovered an old privy used from 1860 to the 1920s that contained coffee beans (http://heritage.ky.gov/nr/rdonlyres/17f07058-c961-427c-bf6b-d5751278c19e/0/seedsinaprivyactivity.pdf). 
>Coffee beans were also recovered from a latrine at an officer's quarters in Fort Larned, Kansas (Geier 2010: 22 " The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites: 
>Method and Topic" http://books.google.com/books?id=QcvITLnxes0C&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=fort+larned+kansas+coffee+beans+latrine&source=bl&ots=qIlP8SbIYU&sig=P7-YZZymQHWz_TcAZ4IaeueRNv8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=c5t6Uvy6Is7vkQfwroH4Cw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=fort%20larned%20kansas%20coffee%20beans%20latrine&f=false).  
>Obviously, conditions have to be right for coffee bean preservation, and methodologies play a huge part in the recovery of the material (i.e. flotation samples). The oldest coffee bean is dated about AD 1200. Carbonized paleobotanic Arabica coffee beans were found in 1997 in an archaeological excavation  on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, near Oman, together with the early thirteenth-century pottery from Yemen(http://www.thefreelibrary.com/World%27s+oldest+coffee+beans+discovered.-a020357509).
>
>Hope this helps!
>
>
>