The Soundscape inside the Ancient Ceren Sweat Bath

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The ancient Ceren sweat bath was a communal facility of notable sophistication, especially for a commoner village. Household 2 supported its functioning with ollas full of water, pine kindling, and presumably structural maintenance. Loma Caldera’s phreatomagmatic eruption phases, with lava bombs, caused its striking preservation. An architectural firm created a precise replica that people can enter. I noted that it fundamentally changed my voice inside, and made recordings that have been analyzed by a physicist and an acoustician. The voices of young children and mature women are not altered, just those of mature males. If this effect was deliberately engineered, it opens domains of implications, suggestions, and speculations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Heat, Steam, and Health: The Archaeology of the Mesoamerican Pib Naah (Sweat Baths)   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35864.0