How would you describe your job to someone standing behind you in the grocery checkout line?
I'm what's called an archaeological chemist; the more romantic description is a molecular archaeologist. I try to tease out ancient molecules that comprise the artifacts found in excavations. I try to solve the mystery of how they were made and what they were used for.

What is your educational background?
I am trained in chemistry and archaeology. I also did work in neurochemistry (brain research). So my training combines the sciences and humanities, which is unusual. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, I majored in chemistry, but minored in English. As a graduate student in ancient Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, I took a lot of foreign languages, including Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Akkadian, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, as well as history and anthropology.

The challenge comes in integrating chemistry and the humanities. Molecular Archaeology is one of the most interdisciplinary fields that can be imagined: you need to understand archaeology, history and ancient texts, even art, in addition to a host of chemical techniques.

What path did you take to get where you are now?
In a very serendipitous way! As an undergraduate, I took science and humanities, since I had a flair for both and wasn't sure which direction I wanted to head in. I became very interested in chemistry and brain research. But I was also interested in what it is to be human and how human societies have developed through time. Archaeology provides new, direct evidence to answer those kinds of questions. So, before completing a Ph.D. in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester, I switched directions and began studying archaeology at Penn..

How did you get your current job?
As a grad student in archaeology at Penn, I wanted to keep my connection with the natural sciences and especially chemistry. The University of Pennsylvania Museum for Archaeology and Anthropology is world-renowned for its Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA), which is the only privately funded facility of its kind in the country. It began back in the 1950's at the second radiocarbon lab in the country, and went on to do pioneering work in geophysical prospecting (magnetometer and resistivity exploration for archaeological sites) and numerous studies of the sciences applied to archaeology.

I worked in the radiocarbon lab as a student on a research fellowship and that kept my hand in chemistry while I was learning the about the archaeology and history. My job developed out of that research fellowship when an opening came up for a research scientist, particularly doing archeological chemistry. It is the only full-time position like this in the US.

What do you consider to be your key career decisions?
I would say taking measure of where this field of Molecular Archaeology is and trying to launch off in new directions. For example, my background had been more in organic chemistry and biochemistry and I began considering how that background could best be put to use in Molecular Archaeology. I did a series of pottery and glass studies using inorganic analyses and was successful with that. The next question was, what did the pottery contain originally and that's where my training in organic analysis came in. The first compound I worked on was the famous Royal Purple dye. A Canaanite Jar with a purplish deposit on its interior had been excavated at the ancient Phoenician site of Sarepta in Lebanon. Using a whole array of analytical techniques, my laboratory was able to establish that the compound, dibromoindigo, had been preserved intact for 3000 years. Humans surround themselves with organic materials-clothes, houses, foods, etc.--but archaeology up until now has not been able to get much information about the organic materials because they we have been lost through degradation. In the last 20 years, a lot of very sensitive chemical techniques have become available that enable us to identify these ancient organic compounds and promise to revolutionize the field.

What is your ultimate career goal?
I'd like to see archaeology based on natural sciences and especially chemistry incorporated into the academic curriculum around the country, which it isn't at this time. I teach one course a year and I'd like to see a full-time position in Molecular Archaeology open in the country. A lot of traditional programs don't have room for this. England, for example, is much farther ahead than we are-at every level. And yet archaeology, which is based on a very limited amount of preserved material recovered from the past, needs to exploit its database for every conceivable clue to date, identify, and reconstruct past technologies and cultures. Chemistry is not a luxury in understanding the history of our bodies and cultures-it is the sine qua non.

What kinds of people do well in your company/organization?
Those who fit in to the existing paradigm: the traditionally defined disciplines that don't accommodate interdisciplinary fields such as Molecular Archaeology at this time. You really have to have your foot in both camps to do good archaeology.

What scientific backgrounds does your company look for?
At MASCA, our goal has been to find people who combine archaeology and natural science, and this has been our strength over the years. But those people are hard to find. In the larger university or museum context, straight chemistry or straight archaeology (with the emphasis on anthropology and the humanities rather than the sciences) has been the rule. The traditional definitions are breaking down very slowly, but some signs exist, such as hiring people doing ancient DNA analysis in anthropology departments.

What is your typical day like?
There really isn't one, because I spend about two months out of every year on excavations. I have directed excavations in Jordan, but most recently I have been combing the world for ancient organic samples that shed light on the earliest foods and fermented beverages of humanity. For example, the last two years have been spent in China working on a Chalcolithic excavation, extracting pottery sherds in a high-school laboratory for analysis back home. We are particularly interested in establishing whether rice or millet was used for the earliest beverages. I have also traveled extensively around China, meeting most of the key archaeologists and scientists, collecting even earlier samples. They are very excited about the prospects for this kind of research, since it bears directly on the origins of Chinese civilization, the longest-lasting culture in the world. In my Penn laboratory, my time is divided between lab research and research and writing.

What do you like about your job? What don't you like?
Discovering something totally new and different. Finding out something that nobody else has ever known before. The field hasn't developed enough to really be recognized as something worth funding and establishing separate academic positions.

What have been your most interesting projects or opportunities?
When I was excavating in Jordan, I discovered a tomb that had 227 burials in it from the early Iron Age. It contained some of the earliest steel artifacts ever found. The steel wasn't used for weapons but for jewelry, anklets and bracelets. It suggests that technological developments often have more to do with aesthetics than practical uses.

Other interesting projects included working on Royal Purple and the earliest wine and beer. Most recently, it was reconstructing what was eaten and drunk at King Midas' funerary feast.

If you had it all to do over again, what would you do differently about your career?
I can't answer that. I think what I've done is so new, so different from anything I would have predicted. I've gone one step at a time, and followed opportunities that have developed.

Who are your role models?
The person that probably had the greatest influence was the woman who set up the radiocarbon lab at Penn, Elizabeth Ralph. It was the 2nd radiocarbon lab in the US (after the University of Chicago) and she gave me my start in the lab and in MASCA, which led to what I do today. She was an excellent model

What do you do when you're not at work?
I play golf (6 handicap), travel, read, and go bird watching with my wife.

What is the most rewarding thing about what you do?
Discovering something new and different about where humans come from and what our cultures are like and how they've developed. Everything we are today is buried in the past.

What advice do you have for others who want a job like yours?
Be trained in both the humanities and social sciences and get a firm background in chemistry. You have to learn as much as you can about some archeological period and region, and it's a good idea to have specialized knowledge of at least one chemical technique. From that, one can branch out into other areas of archaeology and chemistry, and open new vistas on the past. Molecular Archaeology is just emerging as a discipline, but it could well represent the future of archaeology.

Related links:
Patrick McGovern's homepage has additional information about his research.

The world's oldest wine jar (more than 7,000 years old, ca. 5400-5000 BC), discovered by Dr. McGovern, placed MASCA in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Visit the award-winning Web site on the origins and ancient history of wine.

Read more about Dr. McGovern's research of the banquet food and drink at King Midas' funerary feast and his discovery of the earliest known chemical evidence of beer.