The Sonorous Univers of the Jama-Coaque Culture: A Historical-Ecological Approach to Past Soundscapes

Summary

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

Musical creation, starting with the intonation of defined sounds through the construction of sonorous artifacts, can be understood as the way in which humans give a voice to the abstract of their soul. Consequently, human soundscapes, constitute an integrated and holistic reflection culture. Therefore, following the concept of religious routinization (Oyuela-Caycedo 2002) and the demarcated and routinized iconographic depiction of priestly elites in the Jama-Coaque culture (350 BC–AD 1532), in which “musicians” are distinguished by ornithomorphus headdresses (Gutierrez Usillos 2013, 2014; Quelal Madrid 2014); I theorize, under the conceptual framework of historical ecology, that sound modeling, being a constant part of their routinized ceremonies, would entail an equivalent level of standardization. Thus, the compilation of the sounds produced by nonperishable “musical” artifacts (i.e., ocarinas, whistles, and whistling bottles), combined with the corpus of sounds produced by the “singing” birds in the region, would entail the compilation of the fragmented elements of the Jama-Coaque’s soundscape. Hence, this process would enable the reconstruction of the Kamu Purri–type pan flute of Jama-Coaque, and in consequence, of its musical universe.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36434.0