Page 36 - Winter2018

Archaeoacoustics
between the Lanzón monolith and the Circular Plaza (see Figure 6; Kolar et al., 2012), repeated measurements have demonstrated that these ducts acoustically favor pututu sound and perceptibly filter out higher frequencies crucial to speech clarity, for example. Pututus would have been use- ful in transmitting sonic information between the access-re- stricted Lanzón Gallery, where the Lanzón “oracle” monolith (Figure 6, right) is located, and the larger public gathering area outside, the Circular Plaza (Figure 6, left). Whether or not the pututus would have been considered the voice of the oracle is an interpretative matter. From a physical dynamical perspective, we can assert that pututu sound transmission is facilitated architecturally between these spaces. In this research example, archaeoacoustics strengthens material ar- chaeological associations by demonstrating dynamical con- text for the Chavín pututus within the ceremonial locus of Chavín’s Circular Plaza. Architectural acoustical evidence, data from my team’s acoustical study of the site-excavated pututus (Cook et al., 2010), and other archaeological infor- mation together support archaeological arguments for loca- tion-specific pututu performance at Chavín.
Archaeoacoustics and Music Archaeology
Likely due to the custom of identifying sound-producing instruments with music and an established scholarly path for musicological studies, the field of music archaeology precedes archaeoacoustics. Despite substantial attention to the acoustics of well-preserved amphitheaters, an area of archaeoacoustics dominated by architectural acoustical modeling research, European classical archaeology has em- phasized musical concerns identified from texts and visual representations. Archaeological materials readily identified as “musical” are typically studied by music archaeologists, who employ musicological tools and methods concerned
Figure 6. Architectural re- construction of Chavín’s Lanzón Gallery and Circular Plaza (left) and the 4.5-me- ter granite monolith known as “the Lanzón” (right). Il- lustration and photograph by José L. Cruzado Coronel.
with the abstract, conceptual, structural, and performed as- pects of music (its “culture”) rather than sound (its “phys- ics”), which has historically been the domain of musical acoustics. However, in archaeological practice, such culture- communication dichotomies are dissolving, and much as historical musicologists increasingly consider the acoustics of instruments and performance spaces, music archaeolo- gists have begun to incorporate acoustical concerns.
Two recent studies led by scholars of art and architecture of- fer notable incorporations of archaeological acoustics, the Renaissance religious architectural study of Howard and Moretti (2009) and the multisensory exploration of Hagia Sophia in Byzantium by art historian Bissera Pentcheva (2010, pp. 45-56; demonstrated in this video available at acousticstoday.org/hagiasophia). Howard and Moretti’s (2009) study included the reconstruction of musical perfor- mance practice in a dozen churches of Renaissance Venice, accompanied by audience surveys regarding perception of architectural acoustical attributes that were measured and modeled. Pentcheva’s (2010) research considered the meta- phorical value of sound in combination with light, human movement, and other elements of early Christian ritual in Constantinople. Historical musicologists and the choir Ca- pella Romana worked with Pentcheva and Stanford musical acoustics colleagues to reconstruct period music as if per- formed within the 11-second reverberant setting of Hagia Sophia (heard on the video above).
For archaeological contexts including sound-producing in- struments, it is difficult to avoid experimental and experien- tial engagements of archaeological materials. Making sound in places seems to have been a conscious human activity throughout time, as, for example, Morley (2003), Blake and Cross (2015), and Tomlinson (2015) among others have de-
34 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2018