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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.

cambridge music-archaeological research
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