Research Cluster for the Investigation of Acoustic and Musical Elements of Prehistoric Archaeological Sites in Britain

古代遗迹的遗迹是建筑的碎片，正如约翰·巴雷特所说，这些碎片可以“让我们思考创造建筑和在建筑中上演的实践的方向。声学分析是一种基于声学的建筑分析，可以揭示这些实践的细节。因为“时间对于考古学家来说是崩溃的”，即使是对音乐，声学和声音在空间中的使用的部分或破碎的理解也可以使我们从这些建筑碎片中获得的信息生动起来。声音给世界带来了生命，它可以填充空间，创造气氛，并具有强烈的情感力量。它存在于时间域中，可以为原本扁平的解释增加第三个维度。建筑划分空间，声音划分时间。如果不理解在其中发展的叙事，对物理空间的考古学研究是没有生命的。理解吉登斯所说的空间的时间地理，发展叙事和仪式是很重要的，这样我们就可以理解空间的使用者对它的感受。在史前，声音是积累知识的主要焦点，文化和信息的传播主要是通过语言（声音）而不是文字（视觉）进行的。正如马歇尔·麦克卢汉所说：“在那些不知道文字的”口-耳“文化水平的民族中，耳朵对眼睛有着压倒性的统治。“因此，我们可以期望通过调查其声学来了解场地布局的原因，就像调查其视觉和物理布局一样，特别是在一个似乎不是为了住宿或防御等严格功能目的而设计的场地。詹姆斯吉布森告诉我们，声音提供了有关造成它的事件的时间结构和这个事件的振动频率的信息。. .非常精确的。声环境，作为一个关键的焦点在史前的通信和发展的口头和听觉文化，值得尽可能多的调查，使用的背景下，骨，石，金属，木材或陶瓷。由于声学存在于时域中，它可以为我们提供关于所谓的非物质或无形文化元素（如音乐，仪式和宗教）的宝贵信息。当涉及到灵魂、情感和感觉，或生命的“内在性”时，听觉超越视觉，理解超越知识，信仰超越理性。. .在这个概念中，视觉定义了与他人相对的自我;听觉定义了与他人相关的自我。（英戈尔德）。吉布森和英戈尔德都讨论了视觉和听觉是如何不那么完全不同，而是可以互换的，是一个积极的单一感知任务，就像看和听一样。如果我们接受“看和听”是一种融合在一起的不可约的感知行为，那么任何对建筑的考古分析都必须包括对声音的分析。“视觉，因为它是未经训练的主观经验的光，产生知识的外部世界是理性的，分离的，分析和原子论。另一方面，由于听觉依赖于对声音的直接体验，因此被认为是将世界引入感知者，产生一种直觉的、参与的、综合的和整体的知识。“一系列的学习日将创造一个跨学科的重新定位集群，将探索史前的声音架构。它将涉及专家，包括来自考古学，声学，音乐技术，声学建模，数字建模，CAVE和RAVE多媒体视觉环境，民族音乐学，考古声学，音乐考古学和人类学领域的专家。它将致力于发展研究小组和提出建议，根据特定地点制定重点研究项目。

What remains of ancient monuments are architectural fragments which, as John Barrett says, can 'allow us to think through the orientation of the practices which both created that architecture and which were staged within it.' Acoustic analysis is a sonically based architectural analysis that can reveal detail about these practices. Because 'time is collapsed for the archaeological observer', even a partial or fractured understanding of the use of music, acoustics and sound in a space can act to animate the information we have from these architectural fragments. Sound brings the world to life, it can appear to fill spaces, create atmospheres, and have an intense emotive power. It exists in the time domain and can add a third dimension to an otherwise flattened interpretation. Whilst architecture demarcates space, sound demarcates time.An archaeological study of a physical space is lifeless without an accompanying understanding of the narratives that developed within it. Understanding what Giddens might call time-geographies of space, developing narratives and rites of passage, is important so that we can understand how the users of a space felt about it. In prehistory sound was a primary focus for accumulating knowledge, culture and information, as transmission largely happened using language (the acoustic), rather than writing (the visual). As Marshall Mcluhan has said, 'Among peoples at an 'oral-aural' level of culture to whom writing was unknown, the ear exercised an overwhelming tyranny over the eye.' We can therefore expect to find as much out about the reasons for the layout of a site by investigating its acoustics as by investigating its visual and physical layout, especially in a site that does not seem to be designed for strictly functional purposes such as accommodation or defence. James Gibson has told us that sound gives 'information about the temporal structure of the event that caused it and the vibratory frequency of this event . . . with great precision'. The acoustic environment, as a key focus in prehistory of communication and development within an oral and aural culture, merits as much investigation as the context of the use of bone, stone, metal, wood or ceramics. As it exists in the time domain acoustics can give us invaluable information about so-called non-material or intangible elements of culture such as music, ritual and religion. 'When it comes to affairs of the soul, of emotion and feeling, or of the 'inwardness' of life, hearing surpasses seeing as understanding goes beyond knowledge, and as faith transcends reason. . . Vision in this conception, defines the self individually in opposition to others; hearing defines the self socially in relation to others.' (Ingold). Both Gibson and Ingold discuss how vision and hearing are not so much disparate as interchangeable, are an active single task of perception, as looking and listening. If we accept 'looking and listening' is together a fused irreducible act of perception then any archaeological analysis of architecture must include analysis of sound. 'Vision, since it is untrained by the subjective experience of light, yields knowledge of the outside world that is rational, detached, analytical and atomistic. Hearing, on the other hand, since it rests on the immediate experience of sound, is said to draw the world into the perceiver, yielding a kind of knowledge that is intuitive, engaged, synthetic and holistic.'A series of study days will create an interdisciplinary reasearch cluster that will explore the sonic architecture of prehistory. It will involve specialists including those from the fields of archaeology, acoustics, music technology, acoustic modelling, digital modelling, CAVE and RAVE multimedia visual environments, ethnomusicology, archaeoacoustics, music archaeology and anthropology. It will aim to develop research teams and proposals that will develop focused research projects based on particular sites.