Acoustic Archaeologists Interpret Ancient Spaces
Archaeologists and anthropologists convincingly argue that sacred caves, as sites of mystical experience where ancient rituals were performed, constituted a special shamanic cosmos.
The way in which each individual cave was structured and decorated was a unique result of the interactions of four elements: the topography of the cave, its passages, and the chambers; the universal functioning of the human nervous system and, in particular, how it behaves in altered states; the social conditions, cosmologies, and religious beliefs of the different times at which a cave was used; and lastly, the catalyst - the ways in which individual people and groups of people exploited and manipulated all of these elements for their own purposes. (Clottes and Lewis-Wiliams, 1996)
The cave wall paintings at Altamaira, dating from the Upper Paleolithic period some 20,000 years ago and discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, shifted our conception of paleolithic humans, who would no longer be labeled as "primitive." Indeed, the Altamira cave has been called the "Sistine Chapel of Quatemary art" (Beltrain, 1998) With their limited tools and materials, Stone Age artists created works of art that modern painters can only envy. Picasso himself has been quoted saying that "not one of us could paint like that." Later, in the twentieth century, several thousand sites with wall art were discovered in hundreds of countries; some in eastern Germany have been dated as fare back as 300,000 years ago. David Coulson and Alec Campbell (2001) estimate that there are perhaps a million cave art images in southern Africa alone. Although, as evidenced by the written reports of the Chinese philosopher Hanfei-tzu, 2,300 years ago, cave art is not a recent discovery (Bahn 1988), only recently has it become a prominent contributor to our understanding of human nature and the origins of civilization. Clearly, prehistoric humans were artistically sophisticated.
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Steven J. Waller (1993), a pioneer of acoustic archaeology, suggested that the paleolithic art found in the caves of Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume was influenced by the acoustic character of the chambers in which it was created. Pictures of bulls, bison, and deer were more likely to be found in chambers with strong echoes, spaces whose acoustics created percussive sounds similar to the hoofbeats of a stampeding herd. In contrast, acoustically silent chambers are more likely to contain drawings of felines. Cave art may well have incorporated echos as supernatural phenomenon that brought life into visual images. Waller and others speculate that multisensory art was part of the hunters' rituals to summon game. Extensive observations of prehistoric sites support the notion that the subjects of cave wall pictures and the acoustics of their locations were deliberately related. After having personally studied over 150 sites around the world, Waller (2002) observed that pictures of animals whose movements generated loud sounds were frequently place in spaces having enhanced echoes resonances, and reverberation. When such spaces are excited by sound, the animal portraits seem to come aurally alive.
The concept of a cave wall surface as a veil that separates the spirit world from that of ordinary mortals is evident in South African rock painting (Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1990. In this regard, borrowing from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871), Waller (2001) has advanced a compelling theory about the aural perception of echoes in caves. Just as Alice, when viewing a reflection in a mirror, felt she was seeing another world behind the mirror's surface so early humans, when exposed to echoes (sound reflection) in a cave, would have felt they were hearing the sounds or even voices of spirits from a world beyond the cave wall.
Aside from echoes, numerous other acoustic attributes would have been experienced within caves. Sonic "hot spots", regions of resonances where certain frequencies are amplified, also have also been correlated with cave wall images. Similarly, Michel Dauvois and Xavier Boutillon (1990) found a relationship between cave art and lithophones, natural stalactites and stalagmites that produce marimba-like sounds. Indeed, any object or space with a strong resonance had the ability to acquire spiritual meaning.
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Extending this hypothesis to more complex prehistoric monuments in Scotland, Aaron Watson and David Keating (1999) observed a wide range of acoustic attributes in the chambers of these monuments that could have had social and religious meaning. At different frequencies, sounds appeared to originate form different locations, and in some cases, the seemed to come from inside the heads of the listeners. Small head motions changed the perceived pitch and intensity. Listeners within the chamber could detect the approach of others from the acoustic disturbance their bodies made as they moved through long passageways. At certain locations inside a chamber, listeners would hear unexpected tremolos, periodic changes in the intensity of sounds; their speech would acquire an unusual quality, often becoming unintelligible. Watson and Keating explored the acoustical properties of these spaces using musical instruments that might have existed at the time, in effect, re-creating their speculative concept of early soundscapes. Curiously, the long passageways combined with a large enclosed blouse produced a Helmholtz resonator, an acoustic structure that amplifies narrow bands of frequencies, in this case at about 4Hz, well below the lower limit of audibility. Rhythmic drumming would have excited a Helmholtz resonance at this frequency strong enough to be felt. Such infrasounds have been associated with otherworldly experiences and, if sufficiently intense, produce discomfort, disorientation, and sensory distortion.
Archaeologists and anthropologists convincingly argue that sacred caves, as sites of mystical experience where ancient rituals were performed, constituted a special shamanic cosmos.
The way in which each individual cave was structured and decorated was a unique result of the interactions of four elements: the topography of the cave, its passages, and the chambers; the universal functioning of the human nervous system and, in particular, how it behaves in altered states; the social conditions, cosmologies, and religious beliefs of the different times at which a cave was used; and lastly, the catalyst - the ways in which individual people and groups of people exploited and manipulated all of these elements for their own purposes. (Clottes and Lewis-Wiliams, 1996)
The cave wall paintings at Altamaira, dating from the Upper Paleolithic period some 20,000 years ago and discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, shifted our conception of paleolithic humans, who would no longer be labeled as "primitive." Indeed, the Altamira cave has been called the "Sistine Chapel of Quatemary art" (Beltrain, 1998) With their limited tools and materials, Stone Age artists created works of art that modern painters can only envy. Picasso himself has been quoted saying that "not one of us could paint like that." Later, in the twentieth century, several thousand sites with wall art were discovered in hundreds of countries; some in eastern Germany have been dated as fare back as 300,000 years ago. David Coulson and Alec Campbell (2001) estimate that there are perhaps a million cave art images in southern Africa alone. Although, as evidenced by the written reports of the Chinese philosopher Hanfei-tzu, 2,300 years ago, cave art is not a recent discovery (Bahn 1988), only recently has it become a prominent contributor to our understanding of human nature and the origins of civilization. Clearly, prehistoric humans were artistically sophisticated.
-----
Steven J. Waller (1993), a pioneer of acoustic archaeology, suggested that the paleolithic art found in the caves of Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume was influenced by the acoustic character of the chambers in which it was created. Pictures of bulls, bison, and deer were more likely to be found in chambers with strong echoes, spaces whose acoustics created percussive sounds similar to the hoofbeats of a stampeding herd. In contrast, acoustically silent chambers are more likely to contain drawings of felines. Cave art may well have incorporated echos as supernatural phenomenon that brought life into visual images. Waller and others speculate that multisensory art was part of the hunters' rituals to summon game. Extensive observations of prehistoric sites support the notion that the subjects of cave wall pictures and the acoustics of their locations were deliberately related. After having personally studied over 150 sites around the world, Waller (2002) observed that pictures of animals whose movements generated loud sounds were frequently place in spaces having enhanced echoes resonances, and reverberation. When such spaces are excited by sound, the animal portraits seem to come aurally alive.
The concept of a cave wall surface as a veil that separates the spirit world from that of ordinary mortals is evident in South African rock painting (Lewis-Williams and Dowson, 1990. In this regard, borrowing from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871), Waller (2001) has advanced a compelling theory about the aural perception of echoes in caves. Just as Alice, when viewing a reflection in a mirror, felt she was seeing another world behind the mirror's surface so early humans, when exposed to echoes (sound reflection) in a cave, would have felt they were hearing the sounds or even voices of spirits from a world beyond the cave wall.
Aside from echoes, numerous other acoustic attributes would have been experienced within caves. Sonic "hot spots", regions of resonances where certain frequencies are amplified, also have also been correlated with cave wall images. Similarly, Michel Dauvois and Xavier Boutillon (1990) found a relationship between cave art and lithophones, natural stalactites and stalagmites that produce marimba-like sounds. Indeed, any object or space with a strong resonance had the ability to acquire spiritual meaning.
--------
Extending this hypothesis to more complex prehistoric monuments in Scotland, Aaron Watson and David Keating (1999) observed a wide range of acoustic attributes in the chambers of these monuments that could have had social and religious meaning. At different frequencies, sounds appeared to originate form different locations, and in some cases, the seemed to come from inside the heads of the listeners. Small head motions changed the perceived pitch and intensity. Listeners within the chamber could detect the approach of others from the acoustic disturbance their bodies made as they moved through long passageways. At certain locations inside a chamber, listeners would hear unexpected tremolos, periodic changes in the intensity of sounds; their speech would acquire an unusual quality, often becoming unintelligible. Watson and Keating explored the acoustical properties of these spaces using musical instruments that might have existed at the time, in effect, re-creating their speculative concept of early soundscapes. Curiously, the long passageways combined with a large enclosed blouse produced a Helmholtz resonator, an acoustic structure that amplifies narrow bands of frequencies, in this case at about 4Hz, well below the lower limit of audibility. Rhythmic drumming would have excited a Helmholtz resonance at this frequency strong enough to be felt. Such infrasounds have been associated with otherworldly experiences and, if sufficiently intense, produce discomfort, disorientation, and sensory distortion.
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