Journal of Music Archaeology, Volume 1

Restoration attempts to recover the original shape of excavated musical artifacts that have been damaged. Reconstruction is primarily focused on unearthed musical instruments or those depicted in images, and aims either at creating reproductions of playable replicas and imitations, or at simulative manufacturing and model reconstruction. Restoration, on the other hand, can be carried out in tangible or intangible ways. Tangible restoration can be perceived visually, while intangible restoration is instead sonic, and therefore aurally perceptible. Restoration not only recovers the integrity of fragmentary instruments, but also, if possible, reconstructs the sound of the original instrument based on pitch measurement and analysis. Restoration can also be applied to musical iconographic sources and musical textual symbols, such as musical notations and sur-viving classical texts. The restoration of musical notation is not the same as transcription of musical score. The restoration of epigraphic texts aims mainly to restore blurry and otherwise unclear or missing characters. Reconstruction, on the other hand, is a kind of simulation experiment that uses physical or virtual manufacturing to copy, imitate, and reproduce musical remains, for the purpose of exploring ancient musical practices. Based on excavated objects, musical instruments can be copied or imitated, while simulative experiments based on iconography are necessarily limited to speculation.

Schlagworte: restoration, reconstruction, music archaeology

his paper aims to describe some problems and issues that have emerged from the practice of archaeomusicology in South America, especially in the Andean region. Some methodological approaches emerge from the specific problems of organological studies of pre-Hispanic objects, related to the evidence about sound use and the interpretation of sound by local cultures. This article presents four features of Andean music that illustrate some of the main methodological approaches that must be utilized when studying pre-Hispanic music in the Andes; the tone quality, the organological expansion from a singular object to multiple objects; the physical movement of musician and hearer as part of the sound properties, and musical performance as part of a social exchange between musicians and listeners. Each of these features offers a new perspective on archaeo-musicological studies, as well as on the contributions of the field to a greater understanding of new discussions in present society. The focus of this article will be to understand the ‘sound object’ as an acoustic object, as one or more objects, as related to the surrounding ambient, as a moving object, and as a modifier of the player’s or listener’s experience.

Schlagworte: music archaeology, Andean methodological tools, sound design, sound movement, sound and society

This article examines how individual approaches in experimental music archaeology may produce different results in reconstructing Upper Palaeolithic aerophones. The paper reveals how sound tools have been used by both prehistoric and modern hunters to imitate animal calls or to chase their prey in a specific direction. The best examples of such practices are the phalangeal whistles and a possible scraper, which have been found along with the remains of Neanderthals in Europe. A possible scraper was recently discovered in the Middle Stone Age African Border cave. Early percussion instruments like drums or different kinds of idiophones might have had multiple functions for the nomadic hunters. From the 1990s to 2009 a number of new finds of possible Palaeolithic aerophones initiated various experimental studies. Unfortunately, many important questions could not be resolved. I intend to revive the discussions on playing techniques on one hand, and to contribute to the arguments for the non-human origin of some finds on the other. After discussing sound production techniques of simulated animal calls and summarising the possible use of sound-producers as hunting tools, this article briefly presents two possible reconstructions with reeds and two different techniques of blowing a flute without any mouthpiece.

Schlagworte: Blowing technics for Upper Palaeolithic aerophones, perforated mammal bones, ulna wing bones, radius wing bones, flutes and reeds, mirlitons

The present paper provides a multidisciplinary approach integrating musicological, acoustical, and manufacturing aspects to the archaeological study of the mammoth ivory instrument from Geißenklösterle Cave (GK3). We present information on the archaeological background and the find history, and new insights into the playing technique of the instrument, confirming that GK3 was designed as a flute with a notch (M. Malina, S. C. Münzel). Subsequently, physical parameters causing pitch variability in general and their impact on the response of the low register of extended reconstructions are explored (G. Dalferth), before actual experiences of the chaîne opératoire of the GK3 ivory instrument are supplied (W. Hein). Due to its incompleteness, this Palaeolithic instrument allows for variability in reconstructing. A comparative tonal analysis of eight GK3 reconstructions in different lengths was conducted (A. F. Potengowski), offering new clues to possible musical intervals of the original instrument. Finally, the requirements for future research are considered.

Schlagworte: Palaeolithic wind instruments, Reconstructions, Musical analysis, Notched flutes, Mammoth ivory, Geißenklösterle Cave, Aurignacian

Since the discovery of a fragmented Ice Age wind instrument was made in 1994 at a base camp of Palaeolithic reindeer hunters in Grubgraben/Kammern in Lower Austria, different attempts of reconstructing the aerophone have been conducted. Due to the fact, that both ends of the bone are broken predepositionally, varying options of reconstructions have been discussed since 1997. The most prominent research questions remain: How was the instrument likely played, how did it soundand how can the sonic results of reconstruction experiments be displayed and interpreted? This paper will build a bridge from the first detailed research, carried out in the late nineties, to today’s more wide-spread field of scientific research on Palaeolithic aerophones in order to shift the attention to possibilities of reconstructing the Grubgraben artefact additional to those first attempts and to contextualise it. In the course of this, the main focus is on studies of the instrument as an end-blown flute and the resulting tonal properties and pitch ranges, as they were presented and discussed at the 11th Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archaeology in Berlin in November 2021 by Author 1 and Author 2

Schlagworte: Palaeolithic wind instrument, bone flute, Epigravettian, Kammern/Grubgraben, Experimental archaeology, music archaeology

Hundreds of possible prehistoric pottery drums made in Central Europe, mainly from the Late Neolithic (especially the TRB culture) have been found. Their forms vary from funnel-shaped, goblet to hourglass. It is not difficult to imagine equivalent or alternative forms of drums made from hard plant tissues, which are missing in the archaeological record during these or even other periods. Aside from a thought experiment based on archaeological knowledge, experimental and experiential research is presented here with three main examples of wooden drums – a simple frame drum from a branch imaginable since the Palaeolithic, a cylindrical double-headed drum made from a log with a rotten inside, and a wooden alternative to a TRB goblet drum that is compared to a ceramic replica of the same type of TRB drum in terms of material characteristics, technology, tools, skill, productions costs, time requirements and durability. The experience and results prove that simple frame drums are the fastest and the easiest option, followed by cylindrical drums made from logs, however production costs of wooden vessel drums greatly exceed those of pottery ones. Thin walls make ceramic drums much worse in terms of manipulation, playing and durability, but fairly better in clear and loud sound production. The presented examples are closely related to Central European prehistory, but they may serve as valuable analogies to other geographical or cultural contexts as well.

Schlagworte: music archaeology, Experimental archaeology, drums, woodworking, Stone Age

Our project is focused on metal sound objects of the Early Iron Age (Hallstatt Culture), the Roman period, and the period of the Avar Khanate in the Carpathian Basin (Early Middle Ages). The idiophones originate from burial and settlement contexts. Our goal is to gain new information on their function, on tonal influence on ancient peoples’ daily lives, and their impact on society. This interdisciplinary project combines archaeological, metallurgical, acoustical, psychoacoustical, ethnomusicological, and psychological methods supported by experimental archaeology and handcraft experience, as well as by ancient written and iconographic sources. In this article we report on the status of our current results. We present three case studies, one for each period, and an acoustic and psychoacoustic overview of all currently investigated sound objects. Analyses of textile remains adhering to pellet bells complete this paper.

Schlagworte: bells, pellet bells, costume accessories, acoustics, psychoacoustics, Archaeometallurgy, archaeological textiles

Al-Fārābī (d. 950 CE), the so-called ‘Second Master’ (Aristotle being the First Master), is known for his influential works on philosophy, especially his commentaries on Aristotle, as well as for his works on logic, physics and metaphysics, ethics, and politics. It was on behalf of al-Karḫī, Caliph ar-Rāḍī’s (r. 934–940 CE) wazīr, that al-Fārābī wrote his Grand Book on Music, explaining musical concepts such as rhythm and melody to the wazīr. As a logician and practicing musician, he combined and improved upon different sources, such as Greek musical theory, as well as on the Arabic authors and musicians al-Kindī (d. after 870 CE) and Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī (d. 850 CE). In this paper, I discuss several issues related to woodwind instruments mentioned in al-Fārābī’s Grand Book on Music. Al-Fārābī expounds on their interconnections with the tonal production of other instruments, specifying their tone system in terms of finger positions on the fretboard of the ʿūd. Further questions address the relation between theory and practice, as well as some considerations about the modes that seem to be common on woodwinds.

Schlagworte: Al-Farabi, woodwind, Medieval music, Arabic music theory

The present work is a modern English-language translation and annotation of Kakui’s (1237-?) Hakase-Shi-Kuden-no-Koto, the earliest dated medieval Japanese manuscript to give specific details regarding the design and function of the go-in bakase, itself a system of diastematic neumes prevalent in Shingon-sect Japanese esoteric Buddhist circles from as early as the thirteenth century used for recording, as well as recalling, their hymnody. Hakase-Shi-Kuden-no-Koto has the secondary distinction of being the earliest dated treatise on Shingon-sect Shōmyō oral transmission of any kind, and it has the tertiary distinction of being, to the translator’s knowledge, the only extant medieval Japanese manuscript to provide a comprehensive table of medieval Japanese neumes. The treatise has been preserved in a manuscript in the hand of the eighteenth-century Shingon priest Reizui (ca. 1756). Rezui’s copy is currently housed at the Koyasan University Library in Wakayama prefecture, and it is upon this version of Kakui’s text that the current translation is based. This translation is intended to provide both a point of entry into the world of Japanese, and indeed East Asian, neume studies for musicologists, and a point of reference in the necessarily collaborative endeavor of internationalizing the field of comparative liturgy. With that in mind, the footnotes include references to neumes from the notational systems of the Latin and Byzantine Christian churches of late antiquity and medieval times that are, to the translator, obvious graphic equivalents to neumes given by Kakui. This is done not to suggest any particular historical interpretation, but rather to identify phenomenological similarities that beckon to be explored for their historico-musicological significance.

Schlagworte: Japanese Music History, Buddhist Chant, Buddhist Music, Shomyo, Gagaku, Buddhist chant notation, neume studies, neumatic notations, asiatic music historiography, oriental music

There are some 77 representations of non-conch shell pre-Columbian trumpets known, but only one extant ceramic version survives. The others are known from paintings, engravings, and sculptures. Of these there appear to be two primary types: long-widening tube trumpets and wrapped trumpets. In this paper I discuss the evidence for these instruments, their materials and means of manufacture, their sonic signatures, and their uses.

Schlagworte: Maya, Trumpet, Gourd, iconography, Pre-Columbian Music, Experimental Archeology

In 1995 I was asked to acoustically analyse recordings of a nearly unknown lithophone from a small village in West-Sumatra. The talempong batu consists of six large stones of unknown grey to beige material, which look quite rough and natural and are approximately 100 to 150 cm long, 30 to 40 cm wide and 15 to 25 cm thick. All six stones show a complex spectrum with inharmonic overtones that is typical of vibrating 3D objects. The interval matrix between the lowest partials of all six stones was determined. The analysis of the tuning system showed quite unexpected results: the four lowest stones establish a complex system of intervals, which perfectly matches some intervals that are known as perfect major third (5/4, 386.31 cent), ‘Pythagorean’ ditone (81/64, 407.82 cent), and syntonic comma (81/80, 21.51 cent). The deviation between these theoretical intervals and the measured intervals from the instrument is less than the just-noticeable pitch difference (JND) that the human ear can detect. If it is assumed that this system did not simply evolve by chance, its existence allows us to draw some important conclusions on the cultural background and capabilities of its creators.

Schlagworte: Lithophone, Tuning System, Indonesia, Pythagorean Intonation, Just Intonation, Syntonic Comma