Patrick Edward McGovern, GR’80, the former scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the Penn Museum and a former adjunct professor of anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences, died on August 23. He was 80.

Dr. McGovern’s interdisciplinary academic background combined the physical sciences, archaeology, and history. He earned an AB in chemistry from Cornell University, then completed graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester Brain Research Center. He then switched gears, earning a PhD in near Eastern archaeology and literature from the Asian and Middle Eastern studies department in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences. After earning his PhD, he joined the faculty of the Penn Museum as a research specialist. He would remain at the Penn Museum until retiring in 2014. While most of his work at Penn was concentrated at the museum, he also taught in the department of anthropology in the School of Arts & Sciences.  

A pioneer in the field of biomolecular archaeology and archaeological residue analysis, Dr. McGovern worked with experts from academic and industrial laboratories to analyze the world’s earliest alcoholic beverages. Under the auspices of the Penn Museum, he directed excavations in the Baq’ah Valley, Jordan, for more than 25 years; one of these excavations located one of the largest early Iron Age burial caves ever found in the southern Levant. His later excursions pioneered the interdisciplinary field of biomolecular archaeology, including such discoveries as alcoholic beverages in China that dated to about 7000 BCE; early wine from a Neolithic Iranian village, Hajji Firuz, from about 5400 BCE; beer from the Middle East from 3500 BCE; and some of the earliest chocolate from the Americas, dating to 1400 BCE. His most recent research identified residues of 8,000-year-old grape wines in the country of Georgia.

Dr. McGovern was a longtime faculty affiliate of the Penn Museum’s Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) and was heavily involved in neutron activation analyses of ceramics study of residues from ancient jars. He studied jars containing royal purple, an ancient dye extracted from sea snail glands and used by the Phoenicians, and his work on the residue of jars found in tombs from Abydos contributed to scientific understanding of organic medicine in ancient Egypt. His best-known public project with the Penn Museum introduced modern consumers to ancient ales: Using residues extracted from drinking vessels found in a tomb belonging to King Midas’s father, Dr. McGovern successfully recreated the beverage served at the famous ruler’s funerary feast. This recipe led to a commercially produced beer, Midas Touch, in partnership with Dogfish Head Craft-Brewed Ales.

Dr. McGovern wrote the renowned books Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (2003) and Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages (2009), which received an award from the Archaeological Institute of America. He wrote or edited eight other books and over 150 peer-reviewed articles, and the work of his Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health Laboratory was featured widely in print and televised media. 

He is survived by his wife, Doris.