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ACOUSTICS IN MUSIC ARCHAEOLOGY Celtic brass sculpture as well as a lip-reed aerophone (see tinyurl.com/2adkpap3) (Campbell and Kenny, 2012). Beyond musical instrument acoustics, a variety of acousti- cal research areas are being pursued in music archaeology. Spatial and architectural acoustical methods enable the exploration of interconnections between instruments and sites of their excavation or documented use, such as in the musical instrument-supported acoustical survey of the central platform and plaza at the Inca administrative city Huánco Pampa (see rogeratwood.com/article/inca- power-politics) (Kolar et al., 2018). Along with a standard spatial acoustics test signal, that study employed human- produced sounds with archaeologically appropriate instruments (a conch shell horn, a whistle, and human voice) repeated to account for performance variations. Although necessary in connecting physical acoustics with their human perceptual implications, the auditory sciences are infrequently applied, with notable excep- tions such as a recent multimodal study of flintknapping (Smith, 2020) in which acoustic feedback was considered a feature in the crafting of stone tools. Studies of performance mechanics further refine archaeological interpretations about sound-producing instruments. Much attention has been given to the contentious topic of whether certain bones found in Paleolithic archaeological contexts may have been flutes; biologist and flautist Jelle Atema has conducted detailed experiments in both instrument production and perfor- mance to recommend nuanced criteria for the evaluation of proposed sound-producing instruments (Atema, 2014). When performance explorations are connected anthropologically, as in the archaeo-ethnomusicological study of Andean music by Olsen (2002), reconstructive hypotheses can be evaluated in terms of known practices across cultures. Musical acoustics methods enable the reevaluation of archaeological classifications previously made without physical explorations to revise functional hypotheses, as in the study of sucked trumpets across prehistoric Europe and North America (Rainio, 2016). Thus, it becomes clear that acoustics and auditory sci- ence offer a range of theoretical and experimental tools to inform music archaeology’s expanding terrain (Stöckli and Howell, 2020). Whereas research in musical instrument acoustics (see newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/music) aids in the mechanical evaluation and description of archaeological objects that can produce sound (Wolfe, 2018; Campbell, 2021), research on spatial acoustics is equally important in char- acterizing the settings for past music making and musical perception. Architecture can be sound enhancing, such as the temple of Kukulkán (ca 1050-1300 CE) at Chi- chén Itzá (see tinyurl.com/2s3pynke) (Lubman, 1998). Buildings and structures can also be sound producing, such as the pre-Hispanic “sprung dance floor” in the site of Viejo Sangayaico (ca 1000-1615 CE) in southeastern Perú (Lane, In Press). Reconstructions of place-based musical practices present opportunities to study sound- makers in context, such as research on conch shell horns at Chaco Canyon (see whc.unesco.org/en/list/353) in the North American southwest (Loose, 2012) and in recent aerophone reconstructions from the first-millen- nium metropolis of Teotihuacan near Mexico City (see whc.unesco.org/en/list/414) (Both, 2021). Acoustic interactions between sound-producing instru- ments and both built and natural structures provide clues to identify and characterize past human musical activi- ties and experiences of particular places. For example, the study of two early-twentieth century carillons in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (see acousticstoday.org/heritage-carillons) explored “the instrument and its context...holistically, more accurately reflecting the musical sensitivity of a carillonist” by “spectral analysis of audio samples of each bell at differ- ent musical dynamic levels \[that\] enabled the analysis of the acoustic qualities of the bells and the mechanical action of the instruments” (Orr, 2021, p. 1). Orr’s in situ research detailed the instrument-building interactions that influence performance practices as well as audience perceptions. The cross-comparison of spatial and instrument acoustics can suggest ritual functions, as in the study of conch shell horns in the enigmatic first millennium BCE stone architecture of Chavín de Huántar, Perú (see whc.unesco.org/en/list/330), where parallel ducts filter and project the fundamental tones of these instruments between a hidden carved monolith and a countersunk plaza that is decorated with relief carvings of conch shell horn performers (see tinyurl.com/yacxey3d) (Kolar et al., 2012). Acoustical Music Archaeology: Investi- gating the Marsoulas Conch and Its Cave Studying how the Marsoulas conch sounds and the ways its sound can be transformed within the painted cave where it was discovered reveals physical parameters about           54 Acoustics Today • Summer 2022 


































































































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