Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist who analyzed ancient cauldrons, shards of pottery and broken bottles to discover and then recreate the alcoholic beverages that intoxicated prehistoric civilizations, including booze found in the tomb of King Midas, died on Aug. 24 at his home in Media, Pa. He was 80.

His death was announced by the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had been the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health. The cause was complications of prostate cancer.

Described as the “Indiana Jones of ancient alcohol” in articles about his forensic analysis of ancient drinkware, Dr. McGovern almost single-handedly created an academic field that “scholars jokingly refer to as drinkology, or dipsology,” the Smithsonian Magazine wrote in 2011.

To him, these liquid time capsules were an overlooked and revelatory way to connect civilizations.

“Just about every culture you can think of, they have a fermented beverage that’s central to the social activity, religions, and a lot of times, it becomes economically very important,” Dr. McGovern told NPR in 2017. “And I’m always surprised when I see a book on the Paleolithic, or even just more modern recent history, where they don’t really even discuss it.”

Bespectacled, bearded and more professorial in appearance than the Indiana Jones character that Harrison Ford played onscreen, Dr. McGovern used modern scientific methods, including multiple forms of spectrometry, to identify biomarkers in the residue in primitive drinking vessels.

“When analyzing something, I work from a minuscule amount of chemical, botanical and archaeological data,” he told National Geographic magazine in 2016. “I look for principal ingredients: Does it have a grain? A fruit? An herb?”

One of his discoveries, found in shards of pottery dating back 9,000 years to a Neolithic village in China, was believed to be the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world — a mix of fermented rice, honey and hawthorn fruit, a red berry.

Another was the world’s oldest grape wine, dating to 6,000-5,800 B.C. in Georgia’s South Caucasus region.

And from 157 bronze vessels left behind in the tomb of King Midas in Turkey, Dr. McGovern identified a beverage made of barley beer, grape wine and honey mead. Given the proximity of the drinkware to the king’s body, the concoction was probably passed around during his funerary feast, as at an Irish wake.

To Dr. McGovern, that was an important example of how ancient civilizations imbibed in circumstances similar to those today — for commemorating the dead. Other examples included religious ceremonies, rites of passage and after-work gatherings for beer-chugging.

“For the pyramids, each worker got a daily ration of four to five liters,” Dr. McGovern said in Smithsonian magazine. “It was beer for pay. You would have had a rebellion on your hands if they’d run out. The pyramids might not have been built if there hadn’t been enough beer.”

Discovering these ancient spirits wasn’t enough, though. Dr. McGovern wanted to drink them.

In 2000, the Penn Museum held a dinner to fete Michael Jackson — the beer writer, not the moon-walking pop star. Dozens of microbrewery owners attended. A lot of beer was consumed.

During his toast, Dr. McGovern challenged the brewery owners: Who among them could recreate the King Midas drink?

“Was it even possible to make something drinkable from such a weird concoction of ingredients?” Dr. McGovern recalled asking that night in his 2017 book, “Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-Created.” “If anyone was seriously interested, I invited them to my laboratory the next morning at 9 a.m. for more details about how best to reverse-engineer such a beverage.”

More than 20 brewers showed up at his lab.

“I would have thought that their discussions and drinking had gone long into the night, and they would not be able to pull themselves out of bed,” he wrote. “But there they were, anxious to learn as much as possible.”

It was impossible to know the exact recipe to recreate, Dr. McGovern told them, so the brewers would need to tinker with the mixture of ingredients to come up with something palatable.

Soon, samples began showing up at his lab.

“My job was to decide which was the best interpretation and most tasty rendition,” he wrote. “Not a bad job, if you can get it, but I should add that some of the entries challenged the senses.”

The winner was Sam Calagione, the founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del.

Mr. Calagione had “used the finest Greek thyme honey, as well as Muscat grapes, which D.N.A. evidence suggests were among the earliest grape varietals in the Middle East, and 2-row barley,” Dr. McGovern wrote. “Lacking any firm details of the ancient yeast, Sam used a dry mead yeast to ferment the extreme ingredients of his extreme beverage.”

A few months after Dr. McGovern issued his challenge, the Dogfish Head concoction was served at a recreation of the King Midas funerary ceremonies at the Penn Museum.

“It was extremely aromatic, yet well-balanced,” he wrote. “The wine, beer, and mead accented one another without dominating.”

Dogfish Head sells several beers based on ingredients that Dr. McGovern discovered, including Midas Touch and Chateau Jiahu.

“These drinks reflect how our species has developed on this planet — by taking whatever we can in nature and making it into something really good,” he said.

Patrick Edward McGovern was born on Dec. 9, 1944, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to Edward and Florence (Brisbon) McGovern.

His academic journey was intellectually diverse.

After receiving a degree in chemistry from Cornell University in 1966, he did graduate work in neurochemistry at the University of Rochester Brain Research Center, intending to become a physician.

He also pursued graduate degrees in sacred theology and divinity.

“I could never really resolve whether I wanted to do science or humanities,” Dr. McGovern told the Philadelphia public radio station WHYY in 2012.

He settled on archaeology and received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. The field, he said, was a fascinating way to examine “what man’s place in the universe was, how we got here.”

“You find things that are dropped or buried, and then you go in and try to reconstruct what was there,” Dr. McGovern told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1985. “You fit all the pieces together and you learn about a people.”

He married Doris Nordmeier in 1972. She survives him, along with a brother, George.

Dr. McGovern was sometimes asked which came first: bread or beer?

“You need food to exist,” he said. “But if you want to have a good time,” he added, “if you want social lubrication, if you want to up your sexual relations and so produce more children, then alcoholic beverages help.”