Orfeo

About Archaeoacoustics

Ancient monuments have acoustic properties which are today
affording archaeologists a new and stimulating angle on our human
past. In the British Isles and France this has had its origin in our
need to unravel the enduring mysteries of Palaeolithic caves and late
prehistoric stone settings and earthworks, amid a growing realization
that their acoustics might tell us something useful about activities
which took place there. In North America, South Africa and Australia
too appreciation of acoustical effects around rock-art sites is
beginning to affect the way we see and interpret them. But while
observations and measurements of such phenomena - echoes,
resonances, silences - prove enormously interesting, making sense
of them is proving a much greater challenge.

The papers from which this book developed were presented at a
meeting held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research,
Cambridge, in June 2003. Entitled Identifying intentionality in ancient
use of acoustic space and structure, its principal theme was to
address epistemological (methodological and interpretive) questions
now facing students of ancient acoustics. One in particular stands
out: how to discern in the acoustical properties of 'uncertain' places
(which is to say, places where human activity has been detected but
no written record remains of its nature) evidence that they did indeed
affect - in any way - the behaviours of the people who passed through
them. It may 'stand to reason' that they did so because our recent
ancestors must have shared our fascination for unusual acoustics;
but the further back in time we go the less secure this reason
becomes.

Such questions are addressed not only from within but also from
without, with reference to the acoustics of documented historic
structures such as Graeco-Roman theatres and medieval churches
and in relation to 'music archaeology': the already established study
of ancient musical instruments and sound-tools. The great antiquity
of acoustic tool-use behaviours is demonstrated in the Upper
Palaeolithic by bone pipes, from Isturitz in the Pyrenees and from
Geissenklösterle in South Germany, dating back some 35,000 years
or more. Growing appreciation of the adaptive potential of such
musical behaviours promises to take us still further back. Since the
mid-1980s organological and socio-cultural approaches have led in
turn to increasing awareness of the need to address also the
cognitive and behavioural implications, in particular seeking to elicit
those elements which may characterize musical purpose and
musical tradition in the archaeological record. It is to re-frame these
wider and deeper questions in a way that embraces both tool-based
and environmental phenomena that the book advocates the
establishment of what might be called 'cognitive archaeoacoustics'
(Lawson, Scarre, Cross & Hills 1998; Lawson & d'Errico 2002 et
seq.; Lawson 2004).

Chapter 5

Francesco d'Errico & Graeme Lawson: The Sound
Paradox: How to Assess the Acoustic Significance
of Archaeological Evidence?

Like archaeoastronomy the archaeology of acoustic environments
reveals a paradox: the phenomena which it seeks to interpret are
often susceptible of the most detailed scientific scrutiny yet their

purposive nature remains largely unverified and their meanings
inscrutable. The paper takes an epistemological approach to
ancient acoustics, with special reference to portable objects as
well as to large-scale structures and spaces. It proposes a set of
criteria which may be applied to help evaluate the degree of
intentionality represented in such objects and places. Medieval
musical finds from recent excavations are reviewed in relation to
two more ancient and contrasting interpretive case-studies: the
celebrated Middle Palaeolithic perforated cave-bear bone from Divje
babe II, Slovenia and the 22 fragments of bone pipes with
finger-holes from Upper Palaeolithic levels of the Grotte d'Isturitz,
France. These are of such antiquity (c. 45 thousand and up to c. 35
thousand years ago respectively) that their apparent similarity to
modern analogies cannot be relied upon to justify claims of
intention and purpose. We review the evidence for their
manufacture, use and contexts. From this emerge some principles,
some of which, we suggest, may be applicable to architectural
problems.

Chapter 9

Graeme Lawson: Large Scale-Small Scale: Medieval
Stone Buildings, Early Medieval Timber Halls and
the Problem of the Lyre.

This paper identifies medieval and post-medieval archaeology as a
profitable, indeed essential, background to the study of acoustics
in prehistoric built environments, being at a point in time where
ethnography and archaeology converge, and where ethnographical
models may thus be compared with and tested against
closely-related archaeological material. It further identifies the
design and manufacture of ancient musical instruments and sound
tools as useful analogues for ancient architectural design and
engineering, and asks whether we might expect there to have been
actual connections between their respective acoustic traditions.
Two examples illustrate some of the issues at stake. In the first
place is a problem which parallels that of Bronze Age megalithic
acoustics: ship-shaped stone-settings and timber buildings of the
early medieval period in northwest Europe. Records from the early
Middle Ages confirm 'Dark Age' timber halls, whose ground-plans
survive, to have been places where speech and music, specifically
of lyres, played an important part. Lyres are now well-known from
excavated finds of the sixth and seventh centuries. Their forms
show what appear to be acoustical sophistications, yet these do
not seem to result in expansive output characteristics when
replicated. Could the forms of the buildings themselves have served
to compensate? In the second place is the architectural adoption of
instrument-like 'inserts' for acoustical effect, including resonating
jars beneath the choirs of medieval churches. The medieval West
Front of Wells Cathedral, in the southwest of England, possesses
two sophisticated acoustical adaptations, conceived and built into
the masonry structure from the outset: these have been shown to
have been intended specifically for - and used in - the performance
of processional music for Palm Sunday.