Archaeologists Find 5,000-Year-Old Dairy and Wine Traces in Azerbaijan

Archaeologists have found new evidence that people in the southern Caucasus were making and drinking dairy products and grape-based beverages about 5,000 years ago, adding to a growing picture of how Bronze Age communities prepared food and shared it at the table.

The findings come from an international study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed 52 ceramic vessels from the site of Qaraçinar in Azerbaijan. The research involved the University of Bari Aldo Moro, the University of Bonn and several other institutions in Europe and Azerbaijan. It suggests that the Kura-Araxes culture, which spread across the region during the Bronze Age, used different kinds of pottery for different purposes, including cooking, storing and serving food and drink.

According to the study, plain ceramics were mainly used for cooking, while red and black burnished vessels were more often used to consume uncooked dairy products and beverages made from fruit and grapes. The researchers also found traces of plant oils, vegetable waxes and conifer resins, which may have been used as flavorings or preservatives. In some cases, the residues point to grape juice or wine that may have been mixed with resin, a practice that would have given the drink a distinct taste and helped preserve it.

The analysis also identified millet in some of the residues, evidence that suggests contact with Central Asian regions where the grain was already cultivated. The researchers said this was one of the earliest documented appearances of millet in the southern Caucasus.

Giulio Palumbi, a professor of prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology at the University of Bari, said the pottery was central to daily life in Kura-Araxes communities and likely played an important role in social integration and cultural transmission. The study adds to archaeological evidence that fermented drinks, dairy processing and complex food preparation were already part of Bronze Age life far earlier than once assumed.