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Figure 4. Since 2008, the author has adapted a variety of acoustical measurement techniques in fieldwork at archaeological sites including Chavín de Huántar, Perú (ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/chavin), using both loudspeaker-reproduced and human-performed sound sources, captured via multiple-microphone arrays and in-ear microphones. Photograph by José L. Cruzado Coronel.
within the confines of interior architecture (Kolar, 2014; acousticstoday.org/pututus). However, converging forms of archeological evidence points to the performance of of pu- tutus in and around the site’s Circular Plaza. Alongside this 21-meter-diameter, semienclosed, countersunk plaza, the Chavín pututus were excavated in 2001 as a group, depos- ited along the walls of a small room. The plaza’s decorated, relief-carved interior walls feature two known depictions of pututu performers (Figure 5), and several floor paving stones include fossil sea snails, the instruments’ ancient an- cestors. In 2009, acoustical impulse-response measurements were conducted in and around the partially intact Circular Plaza, within the Lanzón Gallery, the interior space to which it acoustically couples by way of three ducts. Repeated ex-
periments using a precision loudspeaker and a spaced array of omnidirectional microphones through these ducts re- vealed that they are near-perfect filters for frequencies in the sounding-tone range of the Chavín pututus. The center duct between the interior gallery and exterior plaza, which is vis- ibly aligned with the carved mouth of the Lanzón, a granite monolith historically reputed to be an “oracle” (Figure 6), further privileges pututu acoustics by emphasizing frequen- cies around 900 Hz (in the range of the instruments’ third harmonic) that is an important timbral signifier (see Figure 7; Kolar et al., 2012).
Whether or not one concurs with the archaeological in- terpretation that suggests pututu performers could enact a metaphorical “line of speech” by sounding the instruments
Figure 5. Relief-carved stone plaques lining the 21-meter- diameter Circular Plaza at Chavín de Huántar, Perú, depict figures holding conch shell horns (pututus) as if in performance. Photographs by José L. Cruzado Coronel and Miriam Kolar.
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