Preface About the subject Recent calls for an ‘archaeology of the senses’ have served as a timely, even overdue reminder that the past which we experience — and which others have experienced before us — is multisensory, drawing not only upon the primary field of vision, but also ‘on touch, smell and hearing (Houston & Taube 2000; ‘Cummings 2002; Thomas 1990). When we first enter megalithic tombs, Palaeolithic painted caves or Ro- manesque churches, the unusual sound qualities of those spaces strike us immediately. Voices resonate, external noises are subdued or eliminated, and a special aural dimension is discerned which comple- ments the evidence of our other senses. Such sounds are intrinsic and indeed prominent elements of such experiences, elements that we ignore at our peril in seeking to understand the human use of places and the construction of buildings and monuments. Yet they are apt to be forgotten when prehistorians discuss such spaces in the abstract. The growing field of archaeoacoustics focuses on the role of sound in human behaviour, from earliest times up to the development of mechanical detection and recording devices in the nineteenth century. In the British Isles and France archaeological interest in ‘site acoustics’ has had its origin in the need to unravel the enduring mysteries of Palaeolithic caves and late pre- historic stone monuments — and a growing realiza- tion that their acoustics might tell us something useful about the human activities which may or may not have taken place there. In North America, South Africa and Australia, similar concerns surround the interpreta- tion of rock-art panels, where acoustical properties may have drawn people to confer special significance ‘on specific places or features in the landscape. From this recent beginning the subject has begun to develop its own agenda, primarily pre- historic in scope and architectural or topographical in direction; nevertheless it does not — or should not — exist in isolation from other sound-related enquiry. One of the purposes of the present volume is to bring together studies from separate but related areas of archaeoacoustics to establish more clearly the common ground that exists between the prehistoric acoustics of ‘uncertain’ places (which is to say, where human activities have gone unrecorded) and those of documented historical structures such as theatres vii and churches — and finds of musical instruments and sound-tools. ‘The study of remains of portable sound-produc- ing devices, sometimes termed ‘music archaeology’, is a long-established and lively one, providing a useful, developed vantage-point from which to view archae- acoustics. The antiquity of such tool-use behaviours is demonstrated by Upper Palaeolithic bone pipes, from Isturitz in the Pyrenees and from Geissenkléster- le in South Germany, dating back some 35,000 years or more. The evolutionary importance of human mu- sical behaviour may take us still further back (Cross 1999; Falk 2000; Mithen 2005). Elite tombs of more recent periods contain many musical grave-goods, sometimes comprising impressive suites of musical instruments; among them the Chinese fifth-century ac tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng with more than 60 suspended bronze bells, a large rack of stone-chimes and a whole orchestra of stringed instruments, flutes and drums (Falkenhausen 1993). Representations in art (whether figurines or wall paintings) further assist the interpretation of musical traditions, especially elite traditions, in these more recent centuries. But it is through the routine processing of archaeological small-finds that we obtain the broadest, most coherent view of musics social prehistory. Following the pio- neering example of Vincent Megaw (e.g. Megaw 1961; 1968a,b; 1981), work in this area at first followed a broadly organological and music-historical direction: focusing on specific artefact classes such as pipes or stringed instruments, and developing museum survey and cataloguing programmes in the search for new pieces — a process which still continues. Interest in music archaeology in Cambridge goes back to the work of John Coles on Bronze Age horns (Coles 1963; 1973), and subsequently that of his PhD students who are amongst the contributors to the present volume (Holmes 1976; 1986; Lawson 1978 et eq.) In 1982, one of us (GL) hosted in Cambridge the first international conference of the ‘Study Group on Music Archaeology’, in association with the Interna- tional Council for Traditional Music. Since the mid-1980s these organological and socio-cultural approaches have matured consider- ably, leading in turn to increasing awareness of the need to address also the cognitive and behavioural implications which underlie ‘music archaeology’; in Particular seeking to elicit those elements which may ‘Scanned with CamScannerPreface 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 we have lately begun advocating the establishment of what might be called ‘cognitive archaeoacoustics’ (Lawson et al. 1998; Lawson & d’Errico 2002; 2003; Lawson 2004). About the volume The attentive reader will identify two interwoven ap- proaches to archaeoacoustics in the contributions to the present volume. In the first, tools such as musical instruments and simple sound-makers offer an im- portant alternative viewpoint in the study of ancient acoustic architectures, through consideration of the abilities of ancient peoples to generate and manipu- late sound using portable objects, either natural or fabricated. Alongside this is set the study of the spaces themselves: from natural enclosures such as caves and ravines to chambers or other structures whose built forms would have served — whether by accident or design — to contain or exclude sound. In between is that large category of places and spaces where sound may or indeed must have played a role, but which are inherently difficult to assess. But throughout the volume the primary focus of the contributors is, for want of a better word, inten- tion. Hitherto we have tended in archaeoacoustics to ‘employ commonsense arguments to allow us to assert the probability that ancient people — like ourselves — would have responded to and even engineered acoustic space. Such arguments risk becoming circular, however, as we attempt to peer further back into our human past. In the present volume, therefore, the con- tributors consider aspects of their own observations or methodologies which might enable us to convert data drawn from measurement of the ancient phenomena we study into admissible evidence of behavioural con- nexion; ‘admissible’, that is, in the sense that they are based on compelling arguments derived from specific evidence. The establishment of such arguments is in ‘our view essential to the future of archaeoacoustics asa disciplinary endeavour, whether considering the properties of structures or of natural settings; and undoubtedly it represents a considerable challenge to our ingenuity. ‘The multi-period nature of ‘music archaeology’ may help us: for example, the sheer quantities of finds of Roman, medieval and even later date can offer an epistemological proving-ground and therefore inform our interpretation of still older material. Crucial in- sights are also afforded by ethnography, which not only illustrates the diversity of ways in which instru- ments and music can be made around the world today, but also reveals contrasting, non-westem attitudes to ‘sound’ and ‘music’ and the different meanings at- tached to them by different cultures. Furthermore, the inherent interest of particular kinds of instruments or monuments should not obscure the fact that the most obvious and most ancient sound-producer of all is the human body: feet, hands and voice. The ubiquity of rhythmic and other musical behaviours in human populations today and the evident deep-rootedness of, some of them in the archaeological record is indeed one of the most exciting aspects of archaeoacoustics, and is touched upon in several of the contributions to this volume. The original papers from which the volume has developed were first presented at a workshop held at the McDonald Institute in Cambridge in June 2003. Although the purpose of the meeting was primarily to address methodological issues, it was also our aim in bringing together a broad range of specialists who ‘were operating in this field to help give archaeoacous- tics the prominence in archaeology that it most surely deserves. For, whatever difficulties we may encoun- ter in trying to establish the specifics of prehistoric sound-use behaviours, no-one who has witnessed the phenomena for themselves can fail to appreciate their potential significance. References Coles, JM,, 1963. Irish Bronze Age horns and their relations with northern Europe. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 11, 326-56. Coles, JM, 1973. Archaeology by Experiment. London: Hutch- inson University Library. ‘Cross, 1, 1999. Is music the most important thing we ever did? ‘Music, development and evolution, in Music, Mind and Science, ed. W-Y. Suk. Seoul: Seoul National University Press 10-39, ‘Cummings, V,, 2002. Experiencing texture and transforma- tion in the British Neolithic. Oxford Journal of Archacol- ogy 21, 249-61. Falk, D,, 2000. L’Australopithéque gracile: était-il musicien? La Recherche. Hors-série 4, Novembre 2000, 79-81. Fatkenhausen, L. von, 1993. Suspended Music: Chime-bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China. 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The archaeology of musical instruments. World Archacology 12. Mithen, S., 2005. The Singing Neanderthals: the Origins of ‘Music, Language, Mind and Body. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Thomas, J. 1990. Monuments from the inside: the case of the Irish megalithic tombs. World Archaeology 22, 168-78. ‘Scanned with CamScanner