Mead

Mead ( /ˈmiːd/; archaic and dialectal "medd"; from Old English "meodu"^[1]), also called honey wine, is an alcoholic beverage that is produced by fermenting a solution of honey and water.^[2] It may also be produced by fermenting a solution of water and honey with grain mash, which is strained after fermentation.^[3] Depending on local traditions and specific recipes, it may be flavored with spices, fruit, or hops^[4] (which produce a bitter, beer-like flavor). The alcoholic content of mead may range from about 8% ABV^[5] to 18%. It may be still, carbonated, or naturally sparkling, and it may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet.^[6]

Mead is known from many sources of ancient history throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia, although archaeological evidence of it is ambiguous.^[7] Its origins are lost in prehistory. "It can be regarded as the ancestor of all fermented drinks," Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat has observed, "antedating the cultivation of the soil."^[8]

Claude Lévi-Strauss makes a case for the invention of mead as a marker of the passage "from nature to culture."^[9] Mead has played an important role in the beliefs and mythology of some peoples. One such example is the Mead of Poetry, a mead of Norse mythology crafted from the blood of the wise being Kvasir which turns the drinker into a poet or scholar.

History[link]

The earliest archaeological evidence for the production of mead dates to around 7000 BC. Pottery vessels containing a mixture of mead, rice and other fruits along with organic compounds of fermentation were found in Northern China.^[10] In Europe, it is first attested in residual samples found in the characteristic ceramics of the Bell Beaker Culture.

The earliest surviving description of mead is in the hymns of the Rigveda,^[11] one of the sacred books of the historical Vedic religion and (later) Hinduism dated around 1700–1100 BC. During the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, mead was said to be the preferred drink.^[12] Aristotle (384–322 BC) discussed mead in his Meteorologica and elsewhere, while Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) called mead militites in his Naturalis Historia and differentiated wine sweetened with honey or "honey-wine" from mead.^[13] The Spanish-Roman naturalist Columella gave a recipe for mead in De re rustica, about AD 60.

Take rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius of this water with a pound of honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces of honey. The whole is exposed to the sun for 40 days, and then left on a shelf near the fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring water.^[14]

Around AD 550, the Brythonic-speaking bard Taliesin wrote the Kanu y med or "Song of Mead."^[15] The legendary drinking, feasting and boasting of warriors in the mead hall is echoed in the mead hall Dyn Eidyn (modern day Edinburgh), and in the epic poem Y Gododdin, both dated around AD 700.^{[clarification needed]} In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, the Danish warriors drank mead. Later, taxation and regulations governing the ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently.^[16] Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown.

Etymology[link]

The English word mead derives from the Old English meodu,^[1] from Proto-Germanic meduz, from Proto-Indo-European *médʰu (honey, fermented honey drink). Slavic med / miod , which means both "honey" and "mead", (Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Croatian: med vs. medovina, Polish 'miód' pronounce [mju:t] - honey, mead) and Baltic medus "honey"/midus "mead", also derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root (cf. Welsh medd, Old Irish mid, and Sanskrit madhu).^[17]

Distribution[link]

Mead was also popular in Central Europe and in the Baltic states. In the Polish language mead is called miód pitny ([ˈmiut ˈpitnɨ]), meaning "drinkable honey". In Russia mead remained popular as medovukha and sbiten long after its decline in the West. Sbiten is often mentioned in the works of 19th-century Russian writers, including Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

In Finland, a sweet mead called sima (cognate with the root of zymurgy) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish Vappu (May Day) festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the pulp and rind of a lemon. During secondary fermentation, raisins are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption; they will rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready. However, the sugar used in modern practice is typically brown sugar, not honey.^[18]

Ethiopian mead is called tej (ጠጅ, [ˈtʼədʒ]) and is usually home-made. It is flavored with the powdered leaves and bark of gesho, a hop-like bittering agent which is a species of buckthorn. A sweeter, less-alcoholic version called berz, aged for a shorter time, is also made. The traditional vessel for drinking tej is a rounded vase-shaped container called a berele.

Mead known as iQhilika is traditionally prepared by the Xhosa of South Africa.

Varieties[link]

Czech Medovina

Mead can have a wide range of flavors depending on the source of the honey, additives (also known as "adjuncts" or "gruit") including fruit and spices, the yeast employed during fermentation, and the aging procedure.^[19] Mead can be difficult to find commercially. Some producers have marketed white wine sweetened and flavored with honey after fermentation as mead, sometimes spelling it "meade."^[19] This is closer in style to a Hypocras. Blended varieties of mead may be known by the style represented; for instance, a mead made with cinnamon and apples may be referred to as either a cinnamon cyser or an apple metheglin.

A mead that also contains spices (such as cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg), or herbs (such as meadowsweet, hops, or even lavender or chamomile), is called a metheglin (/mɨˈθɛɡlɪn/).^[20][21]

A mead that contains fruit (such as raspberry, blackberry or strawberry) is called a melomel,^[22] which was also used as a means of food preservation, keeping summer produce for the winter. A mead that is fermented with grape juice is called a pyment.^[22]

Mulled mead is a popular drink at Christmas time, where mead is flavored with spices (and sometimes various fruits) and warmed, traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it.

Some meads retain some measure of the sweetness of the original honey, and some may even be considered as dessert wines. Drier meads are also available, and some producers offer sparkling meads. There are a number of faux-meads, which are actually wines with honey added after fermentation as a sweetener and flavoring.^{[citation needed]}

Historically, meads were fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria (as noted in the recipe quoted below) residing on the skins of the fruit or within the honey itself. Because wild yeasts can produce inconsistent results, brewers have isolated the various strains in use today, and these have become associated with individual styles of mead. For the most part, these are the same strains that are used in beer and wine production. However, several commercial labs (such as White Labs, WYeast, and Vierka) have developed yeast strains specifically for mead brewing. Mead yeasts are better suited to preserve the delicate honey flavors than are wine or beer yeasts.^{[citation needed]}

Mead can also be distilled to a brandy or liqueur strength. A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as freeze distillation), in the same way that applejack is made from cider.

Mead variants[link]

A homebrewed melomel mead

Trójniak — A Polish mead, made using two units of water for each unit of honey

• Acerglyn — A mead made with honey and maple syrup.
• Balche — A native Mexican version of mead.
• Black mead — A name sometimes given to the blend of honey and black currants.
• Bochet — A mead where the honey is caramelized or burned separately before adding the water. Yields toffee, chocolate, and marshmallow flavors.
• Braggot — Also called bracket or brackett. Originally brewed with honey and hops, later with honey and malt — with or without hops added. Welsh origin (bragawd).=
• Capsicumel — A mead flavored with chili peppers.
• Chouchenn — A kind of mead made in Brittany.
• Cyser — A blend of honey and apple juice fermented together; see also cider.
• Czwórniak (TSG) — A Polish mead, made using three units of water for each unit of honey
• Dandaghare — A mead from Nepal, combines honey with Himalayan herbs and spices. It has been brewed since 1972 in the city of Pokhara.
• Dwójniak(TSG) — A Polish mead, made using equal amounts of water and honey
• Great mead — Any mead that is intended to be aged several years. The designation is meant to distinguish this type of mead from "short mead" (see below).
• Gverc or Medovina — Croatian mead prepared in Samobor and many other places. The word "gverc" or "gvirc' is from the German "Gewürze" and refers to various spices added to mead.
• Hydromel — Literally "water-honey" in Greek. It is also the French name for mead. (Compare with the Catalan hidromel, Galician aiguamel, Portuguese hidromel, Italian idromele, and Spanish hidromiel and aguamiel). It is also used as a name for a light or low-alcohol mead.
• Medica — Slovenian, Croatian, variety of Mead.
• Medovina — Czech, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Bosnian and Slovak for mead. Commercially available in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and presumably other Central and Eastern-European countries.
• Medovukha — Eastern Slavic variant (honey-based fermented drink).
• Melomel — Melomel is made from honey and any fruit. Depending on the fruit base used, certain melomels may also be known by more specific names (see cyser, pyment, morat for examples).
• Metheglin — Metheglin is traditional mead with herbs and/or spices added. Some of the most common metheglins are ginger, tea, orange peel, nutmeg, coriander, cinnamon, cloves or vanilla. Its name indicates that many metheglins were originally employed as folk medicines. The Welsh word for mead is medd, and the word "metheglin" derives from meddyglyn, a compound of meddyg, "healing" + llyn, "liquor."
• Midus — Lithuanian for mead, made of natural bee honey and berry juice. Infused with carnation blossoms, acorns, poplar buds, juniper berries and other herbs, it is often made as a mead distillate or mead nectar, some of the varieties having as much as 75% of alcohol.
• Morat — Morat blends honey and mulberries.
• Mulsum — Mulsum is not a true mead, but is unfermented honey blended with a high-alcohol wine.
• Myod — Traditional Russian mead, historically available in three major varieties: aged mead ("мёд ставленный") — a mixture of honey and water and/or berry juices, subject to a very slow (12–50 years) anaerobic fermentation in airtight vessels in a process similar to the traditional balsamic vinegar, creating a rich, complex, and high-priced product; drinking mead ("мёд питный") — a kind of honey wine made from diluted honey by traditional fermentation; and boiled mead ("мёд варёный") — a drink closer to beer, brewed from boiled wort of diluted honey and herbs, very similar to modern medovukha.
• Omphacomel — A medieval mead recipe that blends honey with verjuice; could therefore be considered a variety of pyment (qv).
• Oxymel — Another historical mead recipe, blending honey with wine vinegar.
• Pitarrilla — Mayan drink made from a fermented mixture of wild honey, balché-tree bark and fresh water.
• Pyment — Pyment blends honey and red or white grapes. Pyment made with white grape juice is sometimes called "white mead."
• Półtorak(TSG) — A Polish great mead, made using two units of honey for each unit of water
• Rhodomel — Rhodomel is made from honey, rose hips, rose petals or rose attar, and water.
• Sack mead — This refers to mead that is made with more honey than is typically used. The finished product contains a higher-than-average ethanol concentration (meads at or above 14% ABV are generally considered to be of sack strength) and often retains a high specific gravity and elevated levels of sweetness, although dry sack meads (which have no residual sweetness) can be produced. According to one theory, the name derives from the fortified dessert wine, sherry (which is sometimes sweetened after fermentation) that, in England, once bore the nickname "sack").^[23] Another theory is that the term is a phonetic reduction of "sake" the name of a Japanese beverage that was introduced to the West by Spanish and Portuguese traders.^[24]
• Short mead — Also called "quick mead." A type of mead recipe that is meant to age quickly, for immediate consumption. Because of the techniques used in its creation, short mead shares some qualities found in cider (or even light ale): primarily that it is effervescent, and often has a cidery taste.^{[citation needed]} It can also be champagne-like.
• Show mead — A term which has come to mean "plain" mead: that which has honey and water as a base, with no fruits, spices or extra flavorings. Since honey alone often does not provide enough nourishment for the yeast to carry on its lifecycle, a mead that is devoid of fruit, etc. will sometimes require a special yeast nutrient and other enzymes to produce an acceptable finished product. In most competitions, including all those that subscribe to the BJCP style guidelines, as well as the International Mead Fest, the term "traditional mead" refers to this variety (because mead is historically a variable product, these guidelines are a recent expedient, designed to provide a common language for competition judging; style guidelines per se do not apply to commercial or historical examples of this or any other type of mead.)
• Sima - a quick-fermented low-alcoholic Finnish variety, seasoned with lemon and associated with the festival of vappu.
• Tej — Tej is an Ethiopian mead, fermented with wild yeasts, and the addition of gesho. Recipes vary from family to family.
• Tella — Tella is an Ethiopian style of beer; with the inclusion of honey some recipes are similar to braggot.
• Trójniak(TSG) — A Polish mead, made using two units of water for each unit of honey.
• White mead — A mead that is colored white with herbs, fruit or, sometimes, egg whites.

Festivals[link]

This section requires expansion.

• Mazer Cup International Mead Competition and Tasting Event -- Sponsored by Gotmead.com, this event is held every year in March in Boulder, Colorado. It is the largest mead event in the world, with over 300 home meads and over 200 commercial meads in competition. There is a Friday tasting event with the gold medal winning commercial meads from the previous year, plus feature meads from around the world.^[25]
• Real Ale Festival in Chicago, Illinois, includes categories for mead as well as cider and perry.^[26]
• Woodbridge International Mead Festival - Sponsored by local residents, it claims to be the only mead festival east of the Mississippi. While few types of mead are available, all are home-brewed and go through a rigorous judging process.

In literature[link]

Mead is featured in many Germanic myths and folktales such as Beowulf, as well as in other popular works that draw on these myths. Notable examples include books by Tolkien and Neil Gaiman. It is often featured in books using a historical Germanic setting, and in writings about the Viking era. Mead is mentioned many times in Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel, American Gods; it is referred to as the drink of the gods. Also, in the books of the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, it is often drunk by Eragon Shadeslayer at feasts in honor of him. Mead is also referenced in The Kingkiller Chronicle novel series by Patrick Rothfuss. The protagonist Kvothe is known to drink metheglin. The non-existent "Greysdale Mead" is also drunk, although it is merely water.

See also[link]

	Wine portal
	Beer portal

• History of alcoholic beverages
• Kilju
• Mead hall
• Kombucha

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mead

Look up mead in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Mead

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article mead.

• GotMead.com
• The Mead Hall
• A Simple Mead Recipe

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Syd Mead
Born	(1933-07-18) July 18, 1933 (age 78) Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Other names	Sydney Jay Mead
Occupation	Industrial designer

Sydney Jay Mead, commonly Syd Mead, (born July 18, 1933 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States) is a "visual futurist" and concept artist. He is best known for his designs for science-fiction films such as Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron. Of his work, Mead was once moved to comment: "I've called science fiction 'reality ahead of schedule.'"^[1]

Biography[link]

Mead was born in Saint Paul Minnesota, July 18, 1933 but spent only a few years there before moving to what would be the second of many homes throughout the western United States prior to graduating from high school in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1951. After serving a three-year enlistment in the U.S. Army, Syd Mead continued on to the Art Center School in Los Angeles, (now the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena) where he graduated in June 1959. He was recruited by the Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Studio under the management of Elwood Engel. Mead left the studio after two years to accept a variety of assignments to illustrate books and catalogues for large corporate entities such as United States Steel, Celanese, Allis Chalmers and Atlas Cement. In 1970, he launched Syd Mead, Inc. in Detroit, Michigan to accommodate the offers he received, most notably from Philips Electronics. As the principal of his newly formed corporation in the 1970s, Syd Mead spent about a third of his time in Europe, primarily to provide designs and illustrations for Philips of Holland. His work for international clients continues to this day. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Syd Mead, Inc. provided architectural renderings both interior and exterior for such clients as Intercontinental Hotels, 3D International, Harwood Taylor & Associates, Don Ghia, and Gresham & Smith. His architectural clients recently have expanded to include the New York firm of Philip Koether Architects, for which he designed the interior of a Manhattan eatery. Design activity accelerated after the corporate and personal move to California in 1975. In 1979, projects began to include work with most major studios, on such feature films as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, followed by Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Short Circuit, Aliens, Timecop, Johnny Mnemonic and Mission: Impossible III. Beginning in 1983, Mead began to develop working relationships with Japanese corporate clients, including Sony, Minolta, Dentsu, Dyflex, Tiger Corporation, Seibu, Mitsukoshi, Bandai, NHK and Honda as well as contributing to two Japanese film projects, The New Yamato and Crises 2050. In the 1990s, Syd supplied designs for two Japanese toy icons, “The New Yamato” and all eight robot characters in the new Turn-A Gundam Mobile Suit series, which were also seen as characters in television shows.

With transportation design as his first love, Syd Mead seldom misses an opportunity to provide his unique blend of futurism and believability to those projects consisting of a vehicle that travels from A to B. Whether it be designing solar powered unicycles, show cars, luxury yachts, cruise ships, or the interiors of private 747s, each receives the same attention to detail within a perfectly designed scenario. This combination has become a Syd Mead trademark and has been seen in everything from concept cars for Ford Motor Company to futuristic “hypervans” which have been the subject of his latest full color illustrations.

Syd Mead continues an active schedule of one-man shows, which started with an invitation to exhibit at Documenta 6, Kassel, West Germany in 1973. His work has since been exhibited in Japan, Italy, California, and Spain. In 1983, in response to an in invitation from Chrysler Corporation to be a guest speaker to their design staff, Syd Mead assembled a selection of slides to visually enhance his lecture. The resulting presentation was a resounding success and since has been expanded and enhanced with computer-generated imagery specifically assembled at the requests of such clients as Disney, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue, Pratt University, the Society of Illustrators and many others both academic and corporate around the world. In March 2010, Syd completed a four-city tour in Australia to capacity audiences at each venue.

Always an advocate of new technologies, Syd Mead has expanded his horizons to include computer illustrations and graphics by mastering a variety of software. Beginning with the official poster of the 1991 Concours d’Elegance “Eyes on the Classics” in Detroit, Michigan, Mr. Mead has attempted to use the latest in available techniques to their best advantage. In 1993, a digital gallery consisting of 50 examples of his art with interface screens designed by him became one of the first CD-ROMs released in Japan in 1992. In 2004 in response to many requests, Mead cooperated with Gnomon School of Visual Effects to produce a 4 volume, “How To” DVD series titled, “TECHNIQUES OF SYD MEAD” which continues to be sought after by designers around the world.

His one-man show, “Cavalcade to the Crimson Castle,” consisting of 114 original paintings and illustrations, enjoyed a three-month showing at the Center for the Arts in San Francisco in the Fall of 1996. The highlight of the show turned out to be Syd’s presentation and lecture, which attracted an audience that exceeded the available capacity of the auditorium. Subsequent personal appearances at schools across the country have attracted record numbers. A touring exhibition of his work is now in the planning stage to mark the 40th anniversary of Syd Mead, Inc.

In February 1998, Syd Mead relocated his studio to Pasadena, California, where he continues to be involved in a variety of design projects. He recently completed work on a documentary of his career with director Joaquin Montalvan. “VISUAL FUTURIST” was released in May 2007 on DVD and is available through the virtual Oblagon bookstore on the Syd Mead official webpage WWW.SYDMEAD.COM. Mead attributes success in an astonishing range of creative activities to the premise that imagination--the idea--supersedes technique.^[2]

Career history[link]

This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (November 2009)

Mead has worked on or worked for the following:

• 1959: Ford Motor Company's Advanced Styling Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
• 1960–1961: Ford Motor Company Styling in Detroit, Michigan.
• 1961: Futuristic paintings for a US Steel booklet.
• 1970: Starts own company, Syd Mead, Inc.
• 1976: Book of designs Sentinel published.
• 1978: production illustrator^[3] for the film Star Trek: The Motion Picture (V'ger design)
• 1980: Begins his work as "visual futurist^[3] " on Blade Runner, designing city backgrounds and vehicles. Also works as a conceptual artist of the electronic world in Tron,^[3] designing lightcycles, tanks, solar sailers, and carriers.
• 1983: Works for the film 2010 as visual futurist,^[3] designing the Leonov spaceship.
• 1985: Conceptual artist ^[3] for Aliens (Sulaco spaceship design). Consultant^[3] and designer of the "Johnny 5" robot in the film Short Circuit. Book Oblagon published.
• 1987: Designed space cruisers, fighters, props, and costumes for the Japanese animation Yamato 2520.
• Conceptual futurist for UFO Cover-Up?: Live! (1988)^[3]
• Conceptual artist of the future depicted in Solar Crisis (1990) ^[3]
• Involved in The Spirit of '76 (1990) ^[3]
• 1991: Kronolog design book (compilation of Kronovecta, Kronoteco, and Kronovid books) published.
• 1991: Designed backgrounds and spacecraft for the video game Terraforming (1992, PC-Engine DUO, Japan), also known as Syd Mead's Terraforming (1993, TurboDuo, North America).
• Production designer for the future Paris in From Time to Time (1992)^[3]
• Futuristic concept consultant for The Fire Next Time (1993) (TV)^[3]
• 1993: Designed vehicles for the computer game CyberRace.
• 1993: Kronolog II (Macintosh CD-ROM, developed as AARX) published.
• 1994: Worked as visual consultant^[3] on designs for Timecop (guns, time machine). For Strange Days, designed "sim-stim" playback deck and headgear electrodes known as "trodes"^[3]
• Visual consultant for Johnny Mnemonic (1995) ^[3]
• 1995: Designed vehicles for the SegaSaturn game Gran Chaser aka Cyber Speedway (CyberRace's sequel).
• 1997: Alien conceptual artist^[3] on the computer game Wing Commander: Prophecy.
• 1998: Designs mobile suit mecha for the anime Turn A Gundam. Credited as concept designer and mechanical designer.^[3]
• 2000: Works on Mission to Mars (conceptual artist) (vehicle design).^[3]
• Production designer in Software (2000) ^[3]
• 2001: Sentury published.
• 2003: Contributes a new Light Cycle design to the PC game TRON 2.0.
• 2004: Gnomon Workshop educational DVDs.
• 2005: Worked on Mission: Impossible III (Mask Maker machine design ^[3]).
• 2008: Worked with Gearbox Software on Aliens: Colonial Marines
• 2010: Sentury II published.

About Mead[link]

Documentary films about Mead and his work include

• Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead (2006) 107 min ^[3]
• 2019: A Future Imagined (2008) 8 min ^[3]

Mead also appears in movie documentaries such as Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner^[3] and Mark Kermode's On the Edge of Blade Runner^[3] and promotional materials such as the DVD extra for Aliens ^[3] and the promotional short film about making of 2010. ^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Syd Mead

• Official website
• Syd Mead at the Internet Movie Database
• Syd Mead entry at Anime.com
• Blogs in JPN
• Detailed information for the "Syd Mead's Terraforming" video-game at the PC Engine Software Bible
• Entry for Syd Mead's Terraforming at PC-Engine Catalog Project
• Event Recap: "An Audience with Syd Mead", Brisbane, March 2010
• Syd Mead at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Gnomon Workshop DVD's with Syd Mead

Interviews[link]

• Starlog (USA) May 1982, Iss. 58, pg. 36-39,+61, by: Ed Naha, "Blade Runner's Syd Mead: An Artist With Designs on the Future"
• Starlog (USA) November 1992, Iss. 184, by: Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier, "Detective Future Past"
• The future came true – An Interview with Syd Mead
• Syd Mead's interview at Jabučnjak, July 2009

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Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead, 1948
Born	(1901-12-16)December 16, 1901 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Died	November 15, 1978(1978-11-15) (aged 76) New York City
Education	Barnard College (1923) M.A., Columbia University (1924) Ph.D., Columbia University (1929)
Occupation	Anthropologist
Spouse	Luther Cressman (1923–1928) Reo Fortune (1928–1935) Gregory Bateson (1936–1950)
Children	Mary Catherine Bateson (b. 1939)

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.^[1] She earned her bachelor degree at Barnard College in New York City, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.

She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture and a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.

An Anglican Christian, she played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.^[2]:347-348

Birth, early family life, and education[link]

Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but raised in Doylestown. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily (Fogg) Mead,^[3] was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants.^[4] Her sister Katharine (1906–1907) died at the age of nine months. This was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named this baby, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years.^[2] Her family moved frequently, so her early education alternated between home-schooling and traditional schools.^[4] Born into a family of varying religious outlooks, she searched for a form of religion that gave an expression of the faith that she had been formally acquainted with, Christianity.^[5] In doing so, she found the rituals of the Episcopal Church to fit the expression of religion she was seeking.^[5] Margaret studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1923.

She studied with professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict at Columbia University before earning her Master's in 1924.^[6] Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Polynesia.^[7] In 1926, she joined the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, as assistant curator.^[8] She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929.^[9]

Both of Mead's surviving sisters were married to well-known men. Elizabeth Mead (1909–1983), an artist and teacher, married cartoonist William Steig, and Priscilla Mead (1911–1959) married author Leo Rosten. Mead also had a brother, Richard, who became a professor.

Mead's observation skills came from her grandmother and her mother. When Mead was a child they would observe and record her actions in a notebook. Mead realized the importance of observing and recording important findings.

Personal life[link]

Mead was married three times. Her first husband (1923–1928) was Luther Cressman, a theology student at the time who eventually became an anthropologist. Mead dismissively characterized their union as "my student marriage" in Blackberry Winter, a sobriquet with which Cressman took vigorous issue. Her second husband was New Zealander Reo Fortune, a Cambridge graduate (1928–1935). As an anthropologist, his Sorcerers of Dobu remains the locus classicus of eastern Papuan anthropology, but he is best known instead for his Fortunate number theory.

Her third and longest-lasting marriage (1936–1950) was to Englishman Gregory Bateson, also a Cambridge graduate, with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist. Her pediatrician was Benjamin Spock early in his career. Spock's subsequent writings on child rearing incorporated some of Mead's own practices and beliefs acquired from her ethnological field observations which she shared with him; in particular, breastfeeding on the baby's demand rather than a schedule.^[10] She readily acknowledged that Gregory Bateson was the husband she loved the most. She was devastated when he left her, and she remained his loving friend ever after, keeping his photograph by her bedside wherever she traveled, including beside her hospital deathbed.^[2]

Mead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, With a Daughter's Eye, Mary Catherine Bateson implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual.^[11] While Margaret Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual, the details of her relationship with Benedict have led others to so identify her. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life.^[11]

She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead's daughter^[12] clearly express a romantic relationship.

Career and later life[link]

During World War II, Mead served as executive secretary of the National Research Council's Committee on Food Habits. She served as curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.^[13] She taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978. She was a professor of anthropology and chair of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus from 1968 to 1970, founding their anthropology department. Following Ruth Benedict's example, Mead focused her research on problems of child rearing, personality, and culture.^[14] She served as president of the American Anthropological Association in 1960. She held various positions in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, notably president in 1975 and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in 1976.^[15]

Mead was featured on two record albums published by Folkways Records. The first, released in 1959, An Interview With Margaret Mead, explored the topics of morals and anthropology. In 1971, she was included in a compilation of talks by prominent women, But the Women Rose, Vol.2: Voices of Women in American History.^[16]

She is credited with the pluralization of the term "semiotics." ^[17]

In later life, Mead was a mentor to many young anthropologists and sociologists, including Jean Houston.^[2]

Mead died of pancreatic cancer on November 15, 1978.

Work[link]

[edit] Coming of Age in Samoa

Samoan girl, c. 1896

In the foreword to Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead's advisor, Franz Boas, wrote of its significance:

Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.^[18]

Mead's findings suggested that the community ignores both boys and girls until they are about 15 or 16. Before then, children have no social standing within the community. Mead also found that marriage is regarded as a social and economic arrangement where wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are taken into consideration.

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman, published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he challenged Mead's major findings about sexuality in Samoan society. Freeman's book was controversial in its turn: later in 1983 the American Anthropological Association declared it to be "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading."^[19]

In 1999 Freeman published another book, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research, including previously unavailable material. Most anthropologists have since been highly critical of Freeman's arguments.

A frequent criticism of Freeman is that he regularly misrepresented Mead's research and views.^[20][21] In a 2009 evaluation of the debate, anthropologist Paul Shankman concluded that:

There is now a large body of criticism of Freeman's work from a number of perspectives in which Mead, Samoa, and anthropology appear in a very different light than they do in Freeman's work. Indeed, the immense significance that Freeman gave his critique looks like "much ado about nothing" to many of his critics.^[20]

In 1996 Martin Orans examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress, and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans concludes that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu (who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead) were false for several reasons: first, Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking; second, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that correspond's to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and third, that Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'aupa'a Fa'amu. He therefore concludes, contrary to Freeman, that Mead was never the victim of a hoax. As Orans points out Mead's data support several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Evaluating Mead's work in Samoa from a positivist stance, Martin Orans' assessment of the controversy was that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms, and that "her work may properly be damned with the harshest scientific criticism of all, that it is 'not even wrong'".^[22]

[edit] Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

Another influential book by Mead was Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. This became a major cornerstone of the feminist movement, since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) Lake region of the Sepik basin of Papua New Guinea (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout Melanesia (although some believe that female witches have special powers). Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, and especially in the large island of New Guinea. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in Oksapmin, West Sepik Province, a more sparsely populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, Mt. Hagen. They were closer to those described by Mead.

Mead stated that the Arapesh people, also in the Sepik, were pacifists, although she noted that they do on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots amongst the Arapesh, the egalitarian emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the "big man" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures — e.g., by Andrew Strathern. They are a different cultural pattern.

In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:

• "Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
• "Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
• "And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones — the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."^{[citation needed]}

Other research areas[link]

Mead has been credited with persuading the American Jewish Committee to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, shtetls, in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the Jewish mother stereotype, a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering, and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.^[23]

She also cofounded the Parapsychological Association, a group advocating for the advancement of parapsychology and psychical research.

Criticism[link]

Derek Freeman, an anthropologist who spent many years among the Samoans, was critical of Mead's findings that culture is responsible for the disturbances of adolescence, and that Samoans had a significantly different experience. He wrote:

"It is with the scientific adequacy of Mead's picture of Samoan society that I shall be concerned with from now on, for to the extent that this picture is defective, Samoa ceases to be a negative instance and Mead's central conclusion that culture, or nurture, is all-important in the determination of adolescent and other aspects of human behavior is revealed as ungrounded and invalid."

Martin Orans, another anthropologist who worked in Samoa, wrote:

"Occasionally a message carried by the media finds an audience so eager to receive it that it is willing to suspend all critical judgment and adopt the message as its own. So it was with Margaret Mead's celebrated 'Coming of Age in Samoa'."

Mead worked for the RAND Corporation, a U.S. Air Force military funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority.^[24]

Legacy[link]

On January 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. UN Ambassador Andrew Young presented the award to Mead's daughter at a special program honoring Mead's contributions, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career. The citation read:^[25]

"Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn."

The 2006 music video for "If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback ends with her quote: "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

In addition, there are several schools named after Margaret Mead in the United States: a junior high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois,^[26] an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington^[27] and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York.^[28]

See also[link]

Systems science portal

• Elsie Clews Parsons
• Tim Asch
• Visual anthropology
• Zora Neale Hurston

Publications by Mead[link]

As a sole author

• Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) ISBN 0-688-05033-
• Growing Up In New Guinea (1930)
• The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932)
• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
• And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942)
• Male and Female (1949) ISBN 0-688-14676-7
• New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928-1953 (1956)
• People and Places (1959; a book for young readers)
• Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)
• Culture and Commitment (1970)
• Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (1972; autobiography) ISBN 0-317-60065-6

As editor or coauthor

• Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, editor (1953)
• Primitive Heritage: An Anthropological Anthology, edited with Nicholas Calas (1953)
• An Anthropologist at Work, editor (1959, reprinted 1966; a volume of Ruth Benedict's writings)
• The Study of Culture At A Distance, edited with Rhoda Metraux, 1953
• Themes in French Culture, with Rhoda Metraux, 1954
• The Wagon and the Star: A Study of American Community Initiative co-authored with Muriel Whitbeck Brown, 1966
• A Rap on Race, with James Baldwin, 1971
• A Way of Seeing, with Rhoda Metraux, 1975

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Acciaioli, Gregory, ed. (1983). "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy (special edition)". Canberra Anthropology 6 (1): 1–97. ISSN 0314-9099. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g919276691. 
• Appell, George (1984). "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry". Eastern Anthropology 37: 183–214. http://gnappell.org/articles/freeman.htm. 
• Bateson, Mary Catherine. (1984) With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03962-6
• Brady, Ivan. (1991). "The Samoa Reader: Last Word or Lost Horizon?" (PDF). Current Anthropology 32 (4): 263–282. JSTOR 2743829. http://www.oswego.edu/~brady/library%20items/samoa.pdf. 
• Caffey, Margaret M., and Patricia A. Francis, eds. (2006). To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead. New York: Basic Books.
• Caton, Hiram, ed. (1990) The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock, University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2
• Feinberg, Richard (1988). "Margaret Mead and Samoa: Coming of Age in Fact and Fiction". American Anthropologist 90: 656–663. DOI:10.1525/aa.1988.90.3.02a00080. 
• Foerstel, Leonora, and Angela Gilliam, eds. (1992). Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Freeman, Derek. (1983) Margaret Mead and Samoa, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2
• Freeman, Derek. (1999) The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research[1], Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7
• Goldfrank, Esther Schiff (1983). "Another View. Margaret and Me". Ethnohistory 30 (1): 1–14. DOI:10.2307/481499. JSTOR 481499. 
• Holmes, Lowell D. (1987). Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead/Freeman Controversy and Beyond. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
• Howard, Jane. (1984). Margaret Mead: A Life, New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Keeley, Lawrence (1996). War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press) ISBN 0-19-511912-6
• Lapsley, Hilary. (1999). Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
• Leacock, Eleanor (1988). "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us". Central Issues in Anthropology 8 (1): 3–20. DOI:10.1525/cia.1988.8.1.3. 
• Levy, Robert (1984). "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are". Ethos 12: 85–92. DOI:10.1525/eth.1984.12.1.02a00060. 
• Lutkehaus, Nancy C. (2008). "Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon." Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00941-4
• Mageo, Jeannette (1988). "Malosi: A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression". Pacific Studies 11 (2): 25–65. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/PacificStudies,860. 
• Marshall, Mac. (1993). "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority". American Ethnologist 20 (3): 604–617. DOI:10.1525/ae.1993.20.3.02a00080. 

• Mead, Margaret (1972). Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-00051-7. 
• Mead, Margaret. 1977. The Future as Frame for the Present. Audio recording of a lecture delivered July 11, 1977.
• Metraux, Rhoda (1980). "Margaret Mead. A Biographical Sketch". American Anthropologist 82 (2): 262–269. DOI:10.1525/aa.1980.82.2.02a00010. JSTOR 675870. 
• Nardi, Bonnie; Mead, Margaret; Freeman, Derek (1984). "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa". Feminist Studies 10 (2): 323–337. DOI:10.2307/3177870. JSTOR 3177870. 
• Moore, Jerry D. (2004). Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Rowman Altamira. p. 105. ISBN 0-7591-0411-5. 
• Patience, Allan, and Josephy Smith (1987). "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth". American Anthropologist 88: 157–162. DOI:10.1525/aa.1986.88.1.02a00160. 
• Paxman, David B. (1988). "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society". Pacific Studies 11 (3): 1–19. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/PacificStudies,879. 
• Pinker, Steven A. (1997). "How the Mind Works" ISBN 978-0-393-04535-2
• Sandall, Roger. (2001) The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays. ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1984). "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry". Human Organization 43 (1): 85–93. http://sfaa.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0018-7259&volume=43&issue=1&spage=85. 
• Shankman, Paul (1996). "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy". American Anthropologist 98 (3): 555–567. DOI:10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00090. 
• Shankman, Paul (2009). The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-23454-6. 
• Shore, Brad. (1982) Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Stassinos, Elizabeth (1998). "Response to Visweswaren, 'Race and the culture of anthropology'". American Anthropologist 100 (4): 981–983. DOI:10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.981. 
• Stassinos, Elizabeth (2009). "An Early Case of Personality: Ruth Benedict's Autobiographical Fragment and the Case of the Biblical "Boaz"". Histories of Anthropology Annual 5: 28–51. DOI:10.1353/haa.0.0063. ISSN 1557-637X. 
• Virginia, Mary E. (2003). Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948). DISCovering U.S. History online edition, Detroit: Gale.
• Young, R.E., and S. Juan. (1985). "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 21 (1): 64–81. DOI:10.1177/144078338502100104. 

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Margaret Mead

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Margaret Mead

• Creative Intelligence: Female ("The Silent Revolution: Creative Man In Contemporary Society" Talk at UC Berkeley, 1962 (online audio file)
• The Institute for Intercultural Studies - ethnographic institute founded by Mead, with resources relating to Mead's work
  • Margaret Mead biography at IIS
• Library of Congress, Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture
• American Museum of Natural History, Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival
• Works by or about Margaret Mead in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• "Margaret Mead, 1901-1978: A Public Face of Anthropology": brief biography, Voice of America