Landscape as Performance Space: Interaudibility within Chaco Canyon

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Like visibility, audibility can be an actively managed aspect of the built environment, and one can question the relationship between site and sound in the landscape. As approached via the combined frameworks of phenomenology, performance theory, and political theater, interaudibility between sites would have served to create, manipulate, and reinforce power relations within the Chacoan community and afford experiences contributing to individual negotiations of identities and meaning. Using the Archaeoacoustics Toolbox for GIS, estimated soundsheds were created for 33 locations within Downtown Chaco dating to the 10th and 11th century CE. Sound Pressure Levels were then evaluated to understand how events at shrines, stone circles, isolated kivas, and great houses may have been heard and experienced at other locations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35855.0