Orfeo

Museums and Research Collections

With ancient music's material evidence at the heart of his investigations Graeme
Lawson attaches especial weight to finds-survey work and to professional liaison
with archaeological colleagues in museums, in the conservation laboratory and in
the field.

A particular kind of survey, the regional 'blind' survey unlimited by type, proves the most effective
- and economical - way of recovering new evidence from existing collections. Pioneered in the
1970s with researchers such as Cajsa Lund (Sweden) and Joan Rimmer (Netherlands), such
survey subjects collections to rigorous inspection, not through their catalogues but through sight of
the whole material, tray by tray, unprejudiced by previous categorisations. It is a time-consuming
but rewarding process. Today, in addition to regular contributions to archaeology's primary
literature of excavation reports, survey in turn enables Cambridge Music-archaeological Survey to
supply technical feedback on a range of important practical museological issues.

Music-archaeological Science

The great benefit of all such finds is their susceptibility to scientific analysis.

Being part of the material world we can interrogate them in the same way that planetary scientists
probe the solar system and forensic scientists investigate evidence of crimes. Musical instruments
of all kinds can be reconstructed and subjected to experimental tests of their engineering
structures and musical capabilities. Ergonometry can point to functional implications of designs.
Even landscape monuments and architectures can be subjected to detailed acoustimetric analysis.

Some of the most exciting new work concerns the analysis of materials and surfaces. Timbers
may be dated and even provenanced by dendrochronology, other materials by mineralogical and
metallurgical analysis. Wood and bone can yield radiocarbon dates. Deposits on surfaces may
indicate preservative treatments or preserve delicate traces of missing components. Remains of
the musicians themselves can be explored, pathology revealing their health and stable isotope
analysis of their teeth showing where they grew up. Optical and electron microscopy of bone,
metal and mineral surfaces shows that they preserve traces of how some instruments were used.

Such surfaces and their wear patterns are the focus of the Ancient Musical Surfaces Project
established by Graeme Lawson in 1996 (Lawson 1999 et seq.)

Taphonomy and Conservation

The extent to which objects' materials and surfaces reflect the ways they were
once used is complicated by their long exposure to biological, chemical and
mechanical processes in the ground, and even during their recovery and treatment.
Thus while an appreciation of taphonomy, the science of decay and survival, is vital
to our understanding of all such fragile traces, it is equally vital that excavators and
conservators understand their nature and importance, if they are to survive
excavation and preservation.

To meet this challenge CMAR engages closely with conservation scientists, promoting the special
character and particular needs of music-archaeological finds, and the consequent importance of
dedicated conservation regimes. Following the success of its Musical instruments: Guides to
Identification for Excavators and Conservators in the early 1980s the series is soon to be reissued
in a new, fully revised format.

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