Sonic Places: Preliminary Acoustic Analysis in Early Colonial Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Everyday places that bodies inhabit are rarely without sound. Sound has a material impact in structuring the relations between people and their surroundings through the vibrations that occur as a response to an activity or event in a given space and time. The auditory system receives this structured sensory information and rhythmically encodes the body with sound that is specific to the place. The place develops a unique sonic fabric that has the potential to influence how people consciously and unconsciously dwell in a space. I demonstrate how sonic fabrics can be recovered from an archaeological site in the neighbourhood of Cerro Coyotepetl in Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, established in the 13th-14th centuries and existing at the time of the Spanish conquest. The site is composed of over 40 terraces and two possible centralized plaza areas that would have supported non-elite residences. A primary objective of my research in Tepeticpac is to explore the ways in which the processes that produce sound converge with numerous temporalities and spaces to produce an experience of place. Specifically, I examine how everyday sound making practices contribute to a sonic character that is unique to the space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25597