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ACOUSTICS IN MUSIC ARCHAEOLOGY the small perforation through the spire of the Marsoulas conch (Figure 3). From a functional point of view, a hole of this size was not required to make the conch sound. If somewhat larger, the aligned holes through two internal turns would be expected to disrupt sound propagation and reflections within the conical bore (Wolfe, 2020; Campbell et al., 2021). However, because of their small diameter, these two internal holes neither improve nor prevent the horn’s sounding. Although such a small per- foration would not enable the attachment of an external mouthpiece, tests demonstrated that a small bone, like the bones from birds that have been used to produce some Paleolithic flutes (Atema, 2014), can be fit through the Marsoulas conch’s open spire and the two aligned holes. Whereas a small-diameter tube is not optimized as a mouthpiece extension, one hypothesis is that the inter- connection of a bone flute with a conch shell horn would constitute an amalgamation of sound-producing instru- ments used during the Upper Paleolithic, a feature that could be seen as evidence for human experimentation in joining together different musical tools. Analogous to a visual expressive culture that appears to mix features of species in some cave paintings, musical instruments created from parts of different animals could be likewise formally combined. This anthropological hypothesis about craft production is supported by the musical acoustics research that shows that the bone-conch amal- gamation, although not optimal for sounding, does not prevent the conch from being used as a lip-valve instru- ment/natural horn. Archaeology and acoustics can be interrelated to explore the visual-expressive connection between the Marsoulas conch and the cave from which it was excavated. It is nota- ble that the curved interior of the shell’s lip and the walls of the cave where the shell was recovered were treated with a similar pigment application technique (Fritz et al., 2021). The similar painting of the shell’s interior and its cave’s interior suggests a deliberate human linkage of multisensory materials. Acoustical science can be used to explore the physical interaction potentials of the shell horn in relationship to the cave from which it was excavated and to evaluate and demonstrate multimodal interrelationships. The preliminary acoustical study of the Marsoulas Cave provided an initial documentation of its spatial acoustics as well as insights regarding sonic features at the location of its central bison panel, whose red-dot painting technique parallels the markings inside the lip of the Marsoulas conch. Acoustics, archaeometrics, and anthropology together inform a developing archaeo- logical narrative about a place where music and visual art seem to have been made together 18,000 years ago. Further research will enable interpretations that can be experientially demonstrated by virtually joining visual art and music reconstructions in spatial context. Musical Directions for Rock-Art Acoustics Acoustical explorations between musical instruments and the proposed locations of their sounding offer exciting possibilities for new archaeological investigations, as detailed in this overview of the Marsoulas conch and cave study. By documenting the acoustical features of the associated conch and cave, this study takes an approach distinct from precedents in rock-art acoustics, including studies of open-air sites and caves, that can be summa- rized according to a dominant premise. Following the initiation of research on sound in decorated caves that employed human vocalizations to evaluate resonance effects (Reznikoff and Dauvois, 1988), acoustical mea- surements in rock-art sites have been conducted to search for patterns of similar acoustical features across locations of artworks (Fazenda et al., 2017). More recent research has sought to relate the acoustics of a painted cave fac- simile to the acoustics of an actual cave, the well-known Lascaux Cave, with similar attention to noted sound effects (see archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en). “Early visitors of the original Lascaux cave were impressed by some unusual acoustical effects. They observed the relative silence in the cave, which led everyone to instinctively reduce voice levels while entering. Then the soundscape gives the impression that some animals are shouting, running, talking...” (Commins et al., 2020, p. 919). Similarly, leading research in rock-art acoustics continues to focus on the documentation of human-observed sound effects in acoustical and auditory perceptual terms to connect spaces with human experience (Mattioli and Diaz- Andreu, 2017). The study of rock-art site acoustics has been positioned as a problem for methodological development (Diaz-Andreu and Mattioli, 2017), and the Marsoulas study calls attention to a new research domain for both open-air and enclosed rock-art sites, considering the interrelation- ships of distinct modes of expressive cultural production without an emphasis on particular sound effects and instead proposing multimodal explorations of acoustical context  58 Acoustics Today • Summer 2022 


































































































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