Traditionally dry or wet hops?

Just curious about how they hopped beer back before modern technology. Just because they didn't have dehydrators back in the day, doesn't mean they didn't dry hops before using them in their beer... one can certainly dry organic matter without modern technology.

That said, however, I'm wondering if it was commonplace to use wet or dry hops back in the pre-industrial days of beer brewing?

I wrote a thesis in college on the history of brewing and I found that hops were both used dry and fresh. Typically hops were dried for ease of transport and to preserve them and use them in the future or outside of the hop growing region. Around the world many brewing cultures have well known beer drinking seasons that typically lie between late September and late November. It is not a coincidence that hop harvests begin just prior to that. So to answer your question... There is no answer. Hops were used in both ways and it depended on what they were needed for. I can dig out my thesis to look up more but that is what i remembered off the top of my head.

Look up oast and Kent and you'll find pictures of all kinds of hop dryers going back to about 1500 when it took off in England. They dried them on a slatted floor with the smoke from a coal fire drying them out. Hops in european beer really goes back to about 1100 AD in Germany. Prior to that, it was gruit, which just means whatever had flavor that was sitting around and could be thrown into the mix.