Archaeoacoustics at Chavín de Huántar: New Evidence for Social Complexity via Sonic Communication Technologies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A dynamic, pervasive link between materiality and humans, sound remains an underestimated and deeply misunderstood domain for archaeological study. Archaeoacoustics fieldwork with broad community contributions at Chavín de Huántar since 2008 has enabled the development of new archaeological research methodologies to reveal, define, and explain communication affordances of site materials, structures, and settings. Sustained explorations of "what studying sound in archaeology could be" in fieldwork leveraged acoustics and auditory science to understand site infrastructural features in both archaeometric and experiential terms. Site-responsive acoustical measurement techniques and novel performance experiments with site-excavated Strombus marine shell horns resulted in unprecedented documentation of archaeological soundmakers and ground-truthing of their use-potential in site settings. Systematic auditory localization experiments further elucidated perceptual implications of Chavín's interior architectural design. Through identifying and exploring diverse evidence for human-environmental interactions at Chavín, site archaeoacoustics research has demonstrated key material-anthropological connections that challenge some long-held interpretations about social roles and spatial functionalities, while exemplifying innovations that mark Chavín as a nexus of social complexity in the Andean Formative period. Nuanced archaeoacoustical analyses, considered with respect to site and regional contexts, constitute a novel “archaeological possibility space” (Kolar 2020) that models a new way of conducting and interpreting multisensory archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38561.0