Orfeo

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.

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.

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