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Figure 2. Three-dimensional (3D) profile of the Marsoulas Cave from the entrance to the end (gray area). The decorated sections known as panels G35-G38 are presented as examples of the visual reconstructive methodology (Fritz et al., 2016). Note the cave’s triangular cross-section (top left), and the location of its central bison panel, the site of preliminary acoustical measurements. Figure 2 previously published in Fritz et al. (2016, Figure 1). and places together create the musical context explored in archaeological interpretations. Archaeology must produce inferences regarding past human lives via remnant materials (see tinyurl.com/2a6te2m2), whereas acoustical science provides a physical basis for exploring those materials in terms of their production and transformation of sound. Acoustics and auditory science can be joined with archaeological methods to reconstruct aspects of sonic communication by humans in past settings (Kolar, 2018). Although musical instru- ment acoustics have been applied in many archaeological studies, less attention has been given to spatial acoustics of archaeological sites that are not known as musical or theatrical venues, such as the decorated cave where the Marsoulas conch was recovered in 1931. At that point, the conch was catalogued as a drinking vessel or ritual cup. As an example of the utility of acoustical methods in exploring an archaeological context with musical evi- dence, this article highlights the study of the Marsoulas conch horn and its cave. The antiquity of Upper Paleo- lithic sites such as the Marsoulas cave, many of which are noted for their wall art, requires the broadest defi- nition of music as nonverbal soundmaking by humans. The comparison of the visual artworks in this cave with techniques used to decorate the sound-producing conch that was found inside the cave demonstrate a symbolical connection between the instrument and place. In both the wall art and the shell modifications, there is pattern replication, evidence of compositional strategies, and exploration of forms from nature. To decorate the cave and the conch, humans were using visual expressive techniques that parallel those employed in historical and present-day art making; whether Paleolithic people also extended such media manipulation strategies to sonic expression is unknowable, yet is a topic to be approached through a cognitive archaeological frame- work. However, there is much information about past music making that can be explored through acoustical science, which provides the tools for evaluating instru- ment performance features, contextual manipulation, and physical interactions between sound producers and performance settings. Music Archaeology’s Acoustical Expansion A field once focused on the identification of sound- producing instruments from archaeological materials (Eichmann, 2018), music archaeology now employs acous- tics, following a larger trend in archaeology to integrate scientific methods from fields appropriate to the materi- als or topics being investigated (Johnson, 2020). Musical acoustics has gained recognition as the archaeometrical approach to characterizing ancient and historical sound- producing instruments, such as techniques employed to reconstruct the Deskford carnyx, a 2,000-year-old Summer 2022 • Acoustics Today 53