The East-West Workshops on Industrial Archaeology were not created to endure; at least, not in a purely virtual format. When we held our first workshop in May 2021, it was mainly a way to prevent the COVID pandemic from disrupting our academic activities and international exchanges. However, the experience exceeded our expectations. Five years on, we are launching the 10th edition of a series of workshops that has become increasingly popular in the West, the East, and beyond. To mark this special occasion, this workshop focuses on the archaeology, heritage, and history of alcoholic beverages. Our speakers will examine the architecture of malt production in Britain and continental Europe (a key component of beer, whiskey, and other spirits), the history of winemaking and wine consumption in Spain, and the landscape of baijiu production in China. While the workshop acknowledges the serious consequences of alcohol abuse, it also recognises it as a significant element in many cultures worldwide, their social practices, and their heritage.
The East-West workshop series aims to exchange ideas and knowledge between Western and Eastern colleagues to develop a more international and diverse industrial archaeology. The event is jointly organised by the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science & Technology (USTB, China) and the UK Association for Industrial Archaeology.
PLACE:
Zoom (online meeting).
Register for FREE to get the Zoom link to the event here:
DATE & TIME:
9 May 2026, Saturday.
10.00-12.00 London time
SPEAKERS & TALKS:
- Amber PATRICK (Association for Industrial Archaeology, Britain): "Malthouse Developments – The Late 18th Century to the Mid-20th Century"
Throughout the late 18th century to the mid-20th century, floor malting and direct-fired kiln drying dominated the malting industry. These two methods governed the two main types of malthouses and the type of kilns used, but not their size(which varied enormously), nor to some extent their location. From the last quarter of the 19th century, a different method of malting began to be used, but it did not supersede floor malting for some considerable time. The method of kilning eventually changed, too, but again, old methods persisted. This talk will look at the building types throughout this period and the changes that occurred, and whether these are recognisable in the exteriors and interiors of the buildings, and ask the question: is it possible to identify malting buildings once they are in other uses? It will be considered to what extent legislation affected design and whether developments in Europe affected malthouse and kiln design in Britain and vice versa.
- Pablo ALONSO GONZÁLEZ (Spanish National Research Council, Spain): "Craft Vs. Industrial? A Critical History of Spanish Wine"
What exactly is a ‘natural’ wine? How does it differ from an ‘artificial’ one? These are highly relevant questions with a long-standing history in Spanish winemaking. This talk delves into the historical debates that, since the 19th century, have pitted winegrowers, scientists, legislators and consumers against each other in Spain over the authenticity of wine. Delving into newspaper archives, agricultural treatises and oenology manuals, this presentation reconstructs how the first regulations on additives came about and how industrial practices were legalised under a paradox whereby wine is preserved as a pure and natural substance and modified for industrial purposes. Contrary to the idea that natural wine is an imported fad, this talk argues that vitalist and purist arguments were already circulating in Spain more than a century ago. The talk explores why, in addition to being an ancient drink, wine is a field where innovation and tradition, industrial and commercial interests, public health concerns and cultural expectations intersect.
- Yuchen WANG (University of Science and Technology Beijing, China): "Symbiotic Cityscape: Luzhou Baijiu Cultural Heritage as an Urban Cultural Landscape"
“Luzhou Laojiao Fermentation Pit Clusters and Brewing Workshops”, as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level and a National Industrial Heritage, is one of the most representative baijiu cultural heritage sites in China. Its surviving components include 1,619 fermentation pits constructed since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), 16 brewing workshop complexes, and 3 ageing caves for storage and maturation. The quantitative richness of these heritage elements provides foundational data for analysing their spatiotemporal distribution patterns. This talk systematically catalogues the heritage components and assesses their preservation status. By integrating temporal characteristics into spatial distribution analysis, it cross-examines historical locations of brewing workshops with the evolving core urban boundaries of Luzhou across different periods and reveals their closely connected distribution pattern from the perspectives of time and space. Further comparative analysis with other Chinese baijiu heritage cases clarifies that the combined effects of factors such as types of raw materials, transportation and labour costs contributes to the intrinsic logic underpinning the formation of urban cultural landscapes represented by Luzhou Laojiao. The core part of Luzhou liquor culture heritage, which is still carrying out production activities to this day, has a development process that is closely related to its host city Luzhou, “organically evolving”, and is a typical urban cultural landscape heritage, which embodies the outstanding universal value that distinguishes liquor culture heritages from other liquor heritages in the world.
