Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Archaeoacoustics

Archaeoacoustics studies historical sound, merging archaeology, anthropology, and psychology to reveal insights about ancient music and acoustic environments.

Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Archaeoacoustics brings together scholars from diverse academic fields – including archaeology, anthropology, architecture, classics, history, art history and sound engineering – to shed light on the role of sound and acoustics in the cultural practices of past societies from various chronologies and locations around the world. This innovative volume covers a broad spectrum of topics, such as the genesis of archaeological investigations into sound, the emergence of speech and song in early humans, the cognitive effects of music in ritualistic contexts, the acoustic dimensions of rock art sites, and the emotional responses elicited by sonorous activities experienced in these decorated spaces. Additionally, the book delves into the study of prehistoric musical instruments, the use of ethnohistorical sources in archaeoacoustic research, the analysis of sound imagery in medieval frescoes, and explores historical approaches to the study of specific acoustic parameters and the sonic properties of urban environments. Each chapter not only aggregates a wealth of academic perspectives but also bridges the gap between theoretical concepts and the most advanced methods used in this field of research. Case studies from all over the world illustrate the different ways in which ancient communities perceived and engaged with sound and the acoustics of the landscapes in which they were immersed. Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places is an essential resource for scholars and students interested in archaeoacoustics and how sound has shaped the cognitive, cultural and spiritual facets of human societies across time and space.

Table of Contents

List of contributors
1. Exploring ancient sounds and places: The challenges of hearing intangible heritage in the past
Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Neemias Santos da Rosa
2. The role of listening in the prehistorical emergence of speech and song: A precursor to becoming human?
Bernd Brabec
3. Archoustemology and the Aurignacian: Ancient ways of knowing through sound
Simon Wyatt
4. The sounds are audible: Fabricating ancient instruments – what more can we learn?
Neil Rusch
5. Methodologies to explore the cognitive effects of music in rituals: Implications for studying ancient ritual activities
Raquel Aparicio-Terrés and Carles Escera
6. Methods for psychoacoustic and emotional evaluation of archaeological soundscapes with auralisation
Samantha López-Mochales and Carles Escera
7. Ethnohistorical sources in archaeoacoustics research: A case study from South-Central California
Ana-María Alarcón-Jiménez, Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos and Margarita Díaz-Andreu
8. Early rock music: Methodology to identify and analyse portable lithophones. An example from Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, US
Marilyn Armagast Martorano
9. Preliminary insights into the archaeoacoustics of cup-marked sounding rocks in the north area of the Gredos mountain chain, Spain
Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos, Martín Almagro-Gorbea and Jesús Caballero Arribas
10. The rock art soundscapes of the Karakol valley (Republic of Altai, Russia): An archaeoacoustic study of a unique landscape
Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Raquel Jiménez Pasalodos, Neemias Santos da Rosa, Daniel Benítez-Aragón and Lidia Alvarez-Morales
11. Sound imagery in medieval Serbian frescoes
Zorana Đorđević
12. Acoustic space then and now: Listening to history
Tess Knighton
13. Estimation of speech intelligibility in the past: Learning from Benjamin Franklin’s experiment
Braxton Boren

Margarita Díaz-Andreu is an ICREA Research Professor based at the University of Barcelona (Spain). She holds a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. She specialises in prehistoric archaeology, focusing on the rock art and archaeoacoustics of Western Europe. Additionally, she is deeply involved in heritage studies and the history of archaeology, particularly emphasising the history of women in professional archaeology and the politics of identity in archaeology, including social engagement, nationalism and colonialism, ethnicity, and gender.

Neemias Santos da Rosa is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bordeaux. He holds a PhD from the Universitat Roviri i Virgili and specialises in experimental archaeology applied to the study of prehistoric art especially the technological, social, acoustic and symbolic aspects of rock art production, with a particular focus on the Iberian Peninsula.