Notes from the Past: Identifying Communities of Practice within Musical Gestures and Production Techniques of Pre-Columbian Greater Nicoya Aerophones from the Tempisque Period (500 B.C. - A.D. 300)

Summary

Typically ephemeral aspects of material culture, such as musical gestures and sound, are often overlooked in the reconstruction of Greater Nicoya culture history. Musical instruments offer clues to our understanding of cultural practices and the kinds of interactions between groups of individuals. Developing from recent research based on both archaeological and museum collections, my research examines—from a music archaeology perspective—a variety of highly decorated and culturally imbued ceramic ocarinas, whistles, and flutes. I examine the level of variation within organological and stylistic aspects of pre-Columbian Greater Nicoya aerophones to demonstrate intrasite micro-scale levels of interaction and communities of practice. I also propose an innovative approach to identifying communities of practice within sound and musical gestures observed through an instrument’s construction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage