Los Horcones, Offering 1: The Archaeology of Music and Ritual on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas

Summary

Offering 1 from Los Horcones is an assemblage of figurine masks, whistles, rattles and vessels that offers an interesting opportunity for analysis that provides information of the auditory, olfactory, and visual experience of this small ritual. The offering, initially thought to be simply a collection of figurines and masks, were later discovered to be whistles—small musical instruments whose simplicity belies the importance of the meanings they encoded. Experimental archaeological analysis revealed that some made a variety of avian sounds, along with several other unidentified sounds. The whistles were played and recorded using a B-flat tuner that then allowed the recording of the range for each working whistle. Variations in notes and performed sounds varied based on whether the player approached them as whistles, flutes, or trumpets and the body size and lung capacity of the player. While the exact songs and notes of the whistles may never be fully elucidated, we were able to propose some potential applications in ceremony, and entertainment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20951