Archaeoacoustics is a sub-field of archaeology and acoustics which studies the relationship between people and sound throughout history. It is an interdisciplinary field with methodological contributions from room acoustics, archaeology, and computer simulation, and is broadly related to topics within cultural anthropology such as experimental archaeology and ethnomusicology. Since many cultures have sonic components, applying acoustical methods to the study of archaeological sites and artifacts may reveal new information on the civilizations examined. This is especially relevant for public gatherings like rituals or ceremonies, where understanding how sound traveled was essential. Different acoustic methods have been applied to archaeological sites, revealing details about architectural features and the spatial organization of past civilizations.Navas-Reascos, G., Alonso-Valerdi, L. M., & Ibarra-Zarate, D. I. (2023). Archaeoacoustics around the World: A Literature Review (2016–2022). Applied Sciences, 13(4), 2361. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13042361
Disciplinary methodology
As the study of archaeoacoustics is concerned with a variety of cultural phenomena, the methodologies depend on the subject of inquiry. The majority of archaeoacoustic studies can be grouped into either a study of artefacts (like musical instruments) or places (buildings or sites).
For archaeological or historical sites that still exist in the present day, measurement methods from the realm of architectural acoustics may be used to characterise the behaviour of the site's acoustic field. When sites have been altered from their original state, a mixed-methodology approach may be used where acoustic measurements are combined with virtual reconstructions and simulations. The output of these simulations may be used to listen to the historical state of the site (via Auralization), to aide in an analysis based in the principles of psychoacoustic and for societal contextualization when historically relevant sources are taken into consideration.
For archaeological objects, acoustic measurements and simulations may be used to investigate the possible acoustic behaviour of artifacts found at a site, as in the case of an acoustic jar. In a similar vein, the relationship between cultural uses of a space and artifacts found within it can be examined experimentally, as with lithophones and ringing rocks.
Notable applications
Natural formations Iegor Reznikoff and Michel Dauvois studied the prehistoric painted caves of France, and found links between the artworks' positioning and acoustic effects. An AHRC project headed by Rupert Till of Huddersfield University, Chris Scarre of Durham University, and Bruno Fazenda of Salford University studies similar relationships in the prehistoric painted caves in northern Spain.
More recently, archaeologists Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Carlos García Benito and Tommaso Mattioli have undertaken work on rock art landscapes in Italy, France and Spain, paying particular attention to echolocation and augmented audibility of distant sounds that is experienced in some rock art sites.Díaz-Andreu, M. and García Benito, C. 2012. Acoustics and Levantine Rock Art: Auditory Perceptions in La Valltorta Gorge (Spain). Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 3591-3599.Díaz-Andreu, M. and García Benito, C. 2015. Acoustic rock art landscapes: a comparison between the acoustics of three Levantine rock art areas in Mediterranean Spain. Rock Art Research 32: 46-62.Díaz-Andreu, M., García Atiénzar, G., García Benito, C. and Mattioli, T. 2017. Do you hear what I see? Analyzing visuality and audibility through alternative methods in the rock art landscape of the Alicante mountains. Journal of Anthropological Research 73: 181-213.Mattioli, T. and Díaz-Andreu, M. 2017. Hearing rock art landscapes. A survey of the acoustical perception in the Sierra de San Serván area in Extremadura (Spain). Time and Mind 10: 81-96Mattioli, T. and Díaz-Andreu, M. 2017. Mattioli, T., Farina, A., Armelloni, E., Hameau, P. and Díaz-Andreu, M. 2017. Echoing landscapes: echolocation and the placement of rock art in the Central Mediterranean. Journal of Archaeological Science 83: 12-25
Steven Waller has also studied the links between rock art and sound. His research is centred around whether the echoes within caves influenced or inspired cave paintings.
Structures and buildings Stonehenge
In 1999, Aaron Watson undertook work on the acoustics of numerous archaeological sites, including that of Stonehenge, and investigated numerous chamber tombs and other stone circles.Watson, A. and Keating, D. 1999. Architecture and sound: an acoustic analysis of megalithic monuments in prehistoric Britain. Antiquity 73, 325-36. Rupert Till (Huddersfield) and Bruno Fazenda (Salford) also explored Stonehenge's acoustics.Fazenda, B.M., 2013. The acoustics of Stonehenge. Acoustics Bulletin,38(1), pp.32-37.Fazenda, B. and Drumm, I., Recreating The Sound Of Stonehenge Acoustics Of Ancient Theatres, The Acoustics of Ancient Theatres Conference Patras, September 18-21, 2011Fazenda, B. and Drumm, I., 2013. Recreating the sound of Stonehenge. Acta Acustica united with Acustica, 99(1), pp.110-117. At a 2011 conference, Steven Waller argued that acoustics interference patterns were used to design the blueprint of Stonehenge.Nadia Drake, Archaeoacoustics: Tantalizing, but fantastical, Sciencenews.org, 17 February 2012 Almost a decade later, in a detailed study described in a 2020 journal article of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by Trevor Cox and Bruno Fazenda (Salford) employed an acoustic scale model reconstruction of Stonehenge to examine the acoustics within and around the site at different historical stages of the monument, applying sophisticated architectural acoustics methods and knowledge to studies on prehistoric archaeology, offering novel insight into how speech and musical sounds were altered by the acoustics of Stonehenge.
Chavín de Huantar Miriam Kolar and colleagues (Stanford) studied various spatial and perceptual attributes of Chavín de Huantar. They identified within the site held the same resonance produced by pututu shells (also used as instruments in the Chavín culture).
Chichen Itza
A handclap made near the foot of El Castillo returns as a brief descending frequency sweep, commonly compared with the call of the resplendent quetzal. The regularly stepped staircase has been modelled as an acoustic diffraction grating, with the detailed response depending partly on the spectral content of the initiating sound. Lubman speculated that the staircase had been deliberately designed to produce an echo resembling the quetzal's call, while later research noted that both accidental and intentional explanations had been proposed.
Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Acheiropoietos
In 2014, an international team of researchers measured the acoustic properties of eight Byzantine churches in Thessaloniki. A subsequent study focused on Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Acheiropoietos, examining how spoken and chanted sound was produced and received in relation to the churches' architecture, furnishings, decoration, liturgy, music, acoustics, and psychoacoustics. The study also considered connections between the two churches and the streets that linked them.
Artifacts
Archaeologist Paul Devereux's work (2001) has looked at ringing rocks, Avebury and various other subjects, that he details in his book Stone Age Soundtracks.Paul Devereux and Tony Richardson, 'Stone Age Soundtracks: The Acoustic Archaeology of Ancient Sites', Vega, 2001.
Ian Cross of University of Cambridge has explored lithoacoustics, the use of stones as musical instruments.
Archaeologist Cornelia Kleinitz has studied the sound of a rock gongs in Sudan with Rupert Till and Brenda Baker.
Panagiotis Karampatzakis and Vasilios Zafranas investigated the acoustic properties of the Necromanteion of Acheron, Aristoxenus acoustic vases, and the evolution of acoustics in the ancient Greek and Roman odea.
Study groups The activity of research groups in the field of archaeoacoustics (sometimes called "acoustic heritage") and the related field of music archaeology is determined by the availability of funding, though some groups maintain a long term presence in the field. In the past twenty years, many researchers have undertaken both seminal work in developing methods to identify, conserve, or recreate aspects of historical acoustic environments, as well as case studies at relevant heritage sites.
The Acoustics and Music of British Prehistory Research Network was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, led by Rupert Till and Chris Scarre, as well as Professor Jian Kang of Sheffield University's Department of Architecture. It has a list of researchers working in the field, and links to many other relevant sites. An e-mail list has been discussing the subject since 2002 and was set up as a result of the First Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics by Victor Reijs.Reijs, V.M.M., MegaSound: Sound in Irish megalithic buildings, First Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, 2002, Session 3aAA2, page 2284.
Based in the US, the OTS Foundation has conducted several international conferences specifically on archaeoacoustics, with a focus on the human experience of sound in ancient ritual and ceremonial spaces. The published papers represent a broader multidisciplinary study and include input from the realms of archaeology, architecture, acoustic engineering, rock art, and psycho-acoustics, as well as reports of field work from Gobekli Tepe and Southern Turkey, Malta, and elsewhere around the world.
The European Music Archeology Project is a multi-million euro project to recreate ancient instruments and their sounds, and also the environments in which they would have been played." Alex Marshall, Music of the ages, Wired, August 2016, p.111
Discredited theories Prior to the establishment of archaeoacoustics as a formal area of study, the possibility of unintentionally recorded sound contained in ancient artifacts held great interest for some theorists. Phonograph cylinders store sound as engravings in the surface of the cylinder, which can be played back by a phonograph with the proper settings. It was hypothesized that this process could have been accidentally replicated during the creation of a ceramic pot or vase, and that such artifacts could be sonified to recover the sounds contained within the elastic medium.
In 1902, Charles Sanders Peirce expressed this idea when he wrote: "Give science only a hundred more centuries of increase in geometrical progression, and she may be expected to find that the sound waves of Aristotle's voice have somehow recorded themselves."Peirce, C. S. (manuscript circa 1902), "Reason's Rules," Collected Papers vol. 5 (1934), paragraph 542. The quote is from near the end. The concept continued to be of interest throughout the second half of the century, with David E. H. Jones discussing the subject in his "Daedalus" column in the 6 February 1969 issue of New Scientist magazine, writing: