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Symphonies in Stone

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At the Sixth Annual Meetings of the European Association of Archaeologists in Lisbon in 2000, colleagues organized a session on archaeology and the senses. I remember sitting in the session and witnessing (through every sense) a stunning set of “papers” each of which fully embraced the widest of perspectives (and dimensions). One of these papers was an acoustic composition by Ezra Zubrow (Buffalo) and Ian Cross (Cambridge) that used sounds generated from Palaeolithic flight blades.

[if anyone has full details of that presentation or about the rest of the session (title, organizers, other papers), please send them (artarchaeologies@gmail.com) and we will update this page]

In the years since Lisbon, I have searched for that original set of acoustic information. No luck. Then, this past May, I stepped into an elevator in a building at the University of Syracuse. It was (very) early in the morning of the last day of the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference. A man stepped into the elevator. On auto-pilot, I said hello and we exchanged small-talk. Turned out to be Ezra Zubrow. I explained the art/archaeology project and the artarchaeologies.com website. He happily offered to send me an MP3 file of the Lisbon presentation. That is the sound that you near as Symphonies in Stone above. In a follow-up email, Ezra provided the following information.

“I am sorry about the poor quality of this. It was recorded for a conference in Lisbon. You have to turn the volume way up to hear it. All the sounds are lithics. Some are high with small blades etc...Others use large flint blocks - several pounds. They are recorded outside, inside, with various things like skins as vibrating baffles on which the sound goes through around, vibrates etc. There are a few sounds of human voices (saying things like I cut my finger). I forget what they actually say but you can tell they are human.”

Many thanks to Ezra Zubrow for proving the audio file and for giving artarchaeologies.com permission to post the file here (copyright remains with Ezra Zubrow and Ian Cross).

Here are several publications that further explore lithophones and the work of Ian Cross and Ezra Zubrow:

  • Blake, E.C. and Cross, I. 2008 Flint tools as portable sound-producing objects in the Upper Palaeolithic context: an experimental study. In P. Cunningham, J. Heeb and R. Paardekooper (eds) Experiencing Archaeology by Experiment: Proceedings of the Experimental Archaeology Conference, Exeter 2007, pp. 123-45. Oxford: Oxbow.

  • Cross, I., Zubrow, E.B.W. and Cowan, F. 2002. Musical behaviours and the archaeological record: A preliminary study. In J. Mathieu (ed.) Experimental Archaeology, pp. 25-34. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

You can reach Ezra at ezubrow@gmail.com and Ian at ic108@cam.ac.uk.