Acoustics in Music Archaeology: Re-souding the Marsoulas conch and its cave.
Abstract
Music archaeology grapples with the challenge of recovering clues about purposeful soundmaking by humans in contexts distinct from those today. Thousands of years before written language, although at the same time as graphical artworks such as wall paintings, engravings, and sculptures, humans made music as evinced by the discovery of 35,000-year-old bone flutes discovered in caves of the Swabian Jura from the Aurignacian period (see bit.ly/3ITVDQC). Musical instruments are considered the most specific form of archaeological evidence for humans’ nonverbal sonic expression. Therefore, musical acoustics research can aid in evaluating sounds that archaeologically evidenced instruments could make. However, explorations of instrument acoustics alone cannot reconstruct ancient music; the places where music was made are indicators about many aspects of musical behaviors as well as experiences that can be related to spatial acoustics.