Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sound has always been an omnipresent component of human experience, and recent trends in archaeological inquiry seek to explore the importance of acoustics, instruments, and what was heard in the past. More than a mere channel of communication, sounds, performances, and music conferred connotations of power, contributed to the formation of identities, and were an important part of all activities, including recreation, aesthetics, and ritual praxis. This session presents case studies in applied archaeoacoustics, psychoacoustics, soundscapes, and archaeomusicology from a variety of scales and cultural perspectives. Defined by Scullin and Boyd (2014:363), soundscapes consist of “all sounds present in any given environment and how these sounds interact within that environment.” Here, we consider a variety of archaeoacoustical topics, including discussions of natural and anthropogenic places that affect the propagation of sound waves; the sonorous landscape; speech intelligibility; theoretical, psychological, and cognitive sonic studies; the conservation and promotion of auditory heritage; and studies of instruments used to produce music and/or signals.

Other Keywords
Landscape Archaeology • Digital Archaeology: GIS • digital archaeology • archaeoacoustics • Pueblo • Materiality • Mortuary archaeology • Bronze Age • Maya: Classic • Iconography and Art: Rock Art

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • United States of America (Country) • Chihuahua (State / Territory) • United Mexican States (Country) • Alberta (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)

  • Documents (6)
Documents
  • Aural Experiences in the Performative Spaces of the Past (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Bellia.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The aural experience is a fundamental process in the development of human beings, which is shaped by architecture and the environment. Sensory experience has rarely been considered in the study of public spaces in antiquity. Aural architecture is that aspect of real and virtual spaces that produces a sensorial and...

  • Current Trends in Archaeoacoustics (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristy Primeau.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, archaeological research has trended toward the exploration of the experiences of past people, particularly through engagement with the senses, seeking new methodologies and associated theories to develop this understanding. Sounds and auditory experiences occurred ubiquitously throughout time and within all...

  • Incorporating Vegetation Reconstruction in Computational Landscape Archaeoacoustics: An Ancient Maya Case Study (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Richards-Rissetto. Kristy Primeau. David Witt.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ancient Maya perceived settlements as *kahkab, or “populated earth”; that is, urban agrarian places where residences intermixed with gardens and orchards. In previous work, we simulated the late eighth- and early ninth-century landscape of the ancient Maya city of Copán to investigate multisensory experience. Building...

  • Lamenting the Dead: The Acoustic Element in Bronze Age Funerary Rituals in Syro-Mesopotamia (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Agata Calabrese.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will employ GIS in exploring the experiential aspects of the burial process in Early Bronze Age North Mesopotamia, with a particular attention to funerary soundscapes. To investigate the potential impact of vocal and musical sound, a 10 m resolution digital elevation model (DEM) was developed, and the "System for...

  • Listening to Wood: Material Engagements with Sound and Trees (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Goldner.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper in cognitive archaeology studies how skilled agents use eco-acoustical features of the environment as mnemonic device. Beginning with the question, What do trees know about canoes?, I excavate how ways of knowing can be deeply sedimented in nature by drawing on the ethnography of Algonquin rock art and fieldwork...

  • Selective Hearing: Toward a Puebloan Probability Model for Archaeoacoustic Landscape Properties Using Iconography and Geophysical Variables (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chester Liwosz.

    This is an abstract from the "Archaeoacoustics: Sound, Hearing, and Experience in Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the first forays into the use of databases and computational analysis of rock art compositions by Leroi-Gourhan in the middle of the twentieth century, digital archaeology applications have boomed, becoming a virtual necessity in twenty-first-century practice. Contemporary computerized tools for managing “big-data”...