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cambridge music-archaeological research <http://www.orfeo.co.uk> |
Graeme Lawson 1980 Stringed musical instruments: artefacts in the archaeology of Western Europe, 500 BC to AD 1200. Doctoral thesis: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1980. Faculty of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Volume 1: text (299 pp). Volume 2: illustrations (313 pp). Volume 1 Contents i Acknowledgements ii Glossary iii Preface ix 1 Introduction 1-4 2 Nature of the evidence 5-26 3 Classification, typology & evolution 27-40 4 Non-operative elements in design 41-62 5 Construction technology & design 63-99 6 Stresses & structures in design evolution 100-137 7 Practical & musical elements in evolution 138-165 8 Conclusions 166-196 Appendices 197-240 A Catalogue of remains 197-228 (66 entries) B Experimental archaeology 229-237 C Stereophotography 238-240 Notes 242-287 Bibliography 288-299 1. Introduction [1-4] The history of European stringed-instrument finds is outlined, from the first discovery at Oberflacht (Germany) in the 1840s to those of the 20th century. They include sites of international importance like Sutton Hoo (England) and Novgorod (Russia) and a range of less well-known (but for music hardly less important) discoveries. The contributions of such early musical commentators as Francis Galpin, Hortense Panum, Kathleen Schlesinger and Otto Andersson are acknowledged; but it is remarked that their approaches are primarily historical or ethnographical, paying little attention to finds. The finds have been neglected within archaeology too, where it was not until around 1960 that music of any sort began to attract serious attention*. Even then interest in stringed instruments remained limited by the supposed fewness of the finds. But by 1973 the writer was identifying an urgent need for new, systematic archaeological surveys of unidentified material from excavations. The discovery by Rupert and Myrtle Bruce-Mitford of pieces of lyres amongst materials from Anglo-Saxon graves at Taplow and Abingdon (England) showed that fragments were being missed: partly because of their decayed state but also because field archaeologists themselves were unfamiliar with the original structures. In Stockholm Cajsa Lund, Christian Reimers and the newly formed Riksinventeringen were already beginning a systematic search for musical finds of all kinds amongst Swedish museums and excavations. |
Abstract of Graeme Lawson's doctoral thesis: 1980 |
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In addition to survey the chapter identifies the need for new, archaeologically based agenda and the application of modern archaeological methods, technical and theoretical, to create a true archaeology of music, grounded in the material record. A holistic approach is advocated, exploring the nature of instrument design, manufacture and ownership, and details and principles of structural engineering and craft production, before going on to consider the musical functions which the instruments may or may not have served. Instruments and their development through time are to be subjected to functional and design analysis. They are to be seen throughout as archaeological artefacts. The study will have a strongly practical, experimental dimension too. In place of traditional, 'interpretive' terminologies of type and structure (e.g. kithara and rotta, 'yoke' and 'wrench') it will adopt a new objective nomenclature based on observed structure. * Amongst the first modern British archaeologists to take an interest in music were John Coles, who later supervised this thesis, and Vincent Megaw and Rupert Bruce-Mitford, who in due course examined it. Coles began making a particular study of Bronze Age music technology, later (with graduate student Peter Holmes) exploring it more broadly within the new field of experimental archaeology. Megaw focussed initially on bone pipes whilst in a more wide-ranging study beginning to define a new subdiscipline: palaeo-organology. Bruce-Mitford was concerned primarily with early medieval stringed instruments which might relate to the Sutton Hoo find, a study which, in musical collaboration with his daughter Myrtle and with makers Dolmetsch & Co., he broadened to include practical experiment. 2. Nature of the Evidence [5-26] Hitherto ancient music studies have been based primarily in the surviving documents. These undoubtedly offer a rich resource, recording - or appearing to record - important details of ancient instruments, how they were used and how they evolved. But there are significant deficiencies and biasses inherent in such evidence, not always acknowledged by their advocates. Some concern the processes of representation through which images and written texts come to be embodied. Others concern the processes through which they have survived into modern times. Particular difficulties are identified in literary and iconographical reference, and in interpreting ancient nomenclature. The reliability of documents as evidence is compared and contrasted with that of music's now growing archaeological record. Artefacts are shown to differ from documents in important respects, not only permitting but demanding different kinds of treatment. However meagre their record may seem at present, they are revealed as the primary source for future studies, affording direct access to ancient musical behaviours unmediated by artist or writer. The certainties they afford, in both detail and context, also contrast with the uncertainties which attend historic instruments surviving 'overground' - in collections of musical instruments. A new 'prehistoric', finds-based approach to ancient music is advocated, in which theories of music are no longer derived from philology or art history but grounded from the outset in the material evidence. Comprehensive surveying of archaeological collections is identified as the strategic key. |
Contents and Chapters 1 - 2 |
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CONTINUE |
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