Orfeo

Cambridge Music-archaeological Research exists to conduct and
promote advanced finds- and site- based studies in the new
archaeologies of music and sound.

Unlike longer-established interpretive approaches to ancient musics (for example
those of philology, art history, ethnography, musicology and dance studies)
archaeology has been slow to appreciate its acoustical assets, and slow therefore
to bring to their study the benefits of its own particular perspectives and terms of
reference. Cambridge Music-archaeological Research seeks to remedy this from
within archaeology, aiming to demonstrate the aptness of such behaviours to
archaeological exploration and their fitness as subjects into which the archaeology
student may profitably invest his or her time and energies.

CMAR aims to dispel the myths that music- and sound-related materials are rare and somehow alien
parts of the fossil record, and that they remain fundamentally inscrutable 'because we do not have
any music'. It aims to show the relevance of the finds not just to mainstream music studies but to a
whole range of current archaeological preoccupations. It identifies the essentially archaeological
character of the material and of the processes of excavation and survey which generate it. It sees
a consequent - and imperative - need for archaeological process in its interpretation. Thus the
origins and evolution of acoustic behaviours - including music - come to appear first and foremost as
archaeological challenges, and the finds and their contexts as material culture.

Viewed in this way music's archaeological evidence ceases to appear marginal to archaeology, a
mere sequence of fortuitous, random survivals which may occasionally allow us to validate theories
emerging from other disciplines: it emerges in its own right as a basis for systematic, interpretive
modelling. Such approaches, CMAR believes, are going to be fundamental to the long-term future of
ancient musical and sound-use studies: both essential to a proper understanding of the evidence
and vital to the very preservation of that evidence, whether extant or yet to be discovered. Musical
and acoustic finds become the fingerprints and DNA of our detective work, their archaeological
contexts our scenes of crimes. Their first-hand testimony offers us direct glimpses into music's
ancient past.

Graeme Lawson writes:
'Too often in archaeology we seem to see music's fossil record as 'something other', to be left to
other disciplines to make sense of. In reality it's no less archaeological than any of the other things
we do: agrigulture or economy or demography or technology - or art. Indeed sound and music are at
the very heart of the 'anatomically modern' human experience. Their ancient material traces have
already yielded some big surprises - and we have still hardly begun to scratch the surface'.

cambridge music-archaeological research <http://www.orfeo.co.uk>