K. E Primeau

This research presents the development and critical assessment of an Archaeoacoustics Toolbox for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology written in the Python programming language, and applies this methodology to cross cultural case studies exploring the importance of soundsheds in an anthropological-archaeological context. As counterpoint to a common critique of experiential theoretical approaches the Soundshed Analysis and Soundshed Analysis-Variable Cover tools provide a replicable means of modeling baseline estimates of the experience of sound. Testing against modern acoustical studies establishing scientific accuracy, and explanations of the sound physics calculations performed by the tools are provided. The tools are then applied to case studies situated in Ancestral Puebloan sites within Chaco Canyon; the Classic Period Maya Kingdom of Copan; and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland to explore a variety of modeling techniques and culturally-derived inputs. In addition to demonstrating the use of the Archaeoacoustics Toolbox, each of the case studies represents an individual contribution to understanding the importance of what was heard in the past. By incorporating a consideration of landscape acoustics, archaeologists can more fully understand the embodied experience explored through phenomenological, perceptive, and performance-based approaches. A GIS approach to landscape scale archaeoacoustics provides a contextualizing framework by which researchers can
approach auditory hypotheses, explore embodied experience, and listen to what the past is telling us.

Humans inhabit rich social and physical worlds and archaeology is increasingly engaging with the multisensory experience of life in the past. In this article, the authors model the soundscapes of five Chacoan communities on the Colorado Plateau, where habitation sites cluster around monumental great houses. The work demonstrates that the audible range of a conch-shell trumpet blown from atop these great houses consistently maps the distribution of associated habitation sites. Staying within the audible reach of great houses may have helped maintain the social cohesion of communities in the past which, the authors argue, also has implications for the management of archaeological landscapes in the modern world.

Like visibility, audibility can be an actively managed aspect of the built environment, and one can question the relationship between site and sound in the landscape. As approached via the combined frameworks of phenomenology, performance theory, and political theater, interaudibility between sites would have served to create, manipulate, and reinforce power relations within the Chacoan community and afford experiences contributing to individual negotiations of identities and meaning. Using the Archaeoacoustics Toolbox for GIS, estimated soundsheds were created for 33 locations within Downtown Chaco dating to the 10th and 11th century CE. Sound Pressure Levels were then evaluated to understand how events at shrines, stone circles, isolated kivas, and great houses may have been heard and experienced at other locations.

In recent years, archaeological research has trended towards the exploration of the experiences of past people, particularly through engagement with the senses, seeking new methodologies and associated theories to develop this understanding. Sounds and auditory experiences occurred ubiquitously throughout time and within all cultures and were ascribed cultural meanings. Current research approaches to archaeoacoustics, psychoacoustics, neuroacoustics, soundscapes, and archaeomusicology are as variable as the sonic hypotheses that can be explored. The importance of what was and was not heard in the past is approached through a variety of methods including: subject-centered-survey, on-site experimentation and recording, reproduction or playing of instruments, and computer-aided modeling such as Virtual Reality or Geographic Information Systems approaches. Theoretical approaches such as affordance theory, performance theory and phenomenology situate our methods and task us to delve deeper, considering how auditory experiences conferred connotations of power or contributed to the formation of individual and group identities. This paper serves as an introduction to the papers being presented within the symposium "Archaeoacoustics: sound, hearing, and experience in archaeology," and presents a general overview of the field of archaeoacoustics by reviewing commonly employed methods and theories.

Recent development in the field of landscape archaeoacoustics has resulted in improved GIS-based soundshed modeling solutions, however, it has also led to the identification of several limitations of these tools.  Foremost among these limitations is the lack of reliable modeling capability to explore the effects of vegetation attenuation or variable ground cover types on audibility.  While these limitations do not impact the study of archaeoacoustics in fairly homogenous landscapes, use of these tools in a landscape of ecotones can result in the production of audibility maps and models which do not reflect the ecological and anthropogenic variation in sonorous environments.  This study describes the current state of soundshed modeling; provides a detailed examination of the challenges and tools available to model vegetation attenuation, variable ground cover types, and other impacts to acoustic transmission paths; and explores solutions to these obstacles.  The results of this analysis will be discussed in relation to the “Soundshed Analysis Toolbox” (presented in Primeau and Witt 2018), written in Python script for use in ArcGIS.  Ultimately, this research will be used to improve the toolbox allowing landscape scale soundshed modeling to be applied to a vast array of site locations.

Sound has been a long disregarded aspect of the cultural landscape, despite being an important factor in how we, as human beings, interact with the wider world. By incorporating a consideration of sound, archaeologists can more fully understand the embodied experience explored through phenomenological approaches. In this poster, we investigate the interaudibility present within the built landscape of Chaco Canyon, using a GIS tool we have developed over the past two years. Focusing on Downtown Chaco, we present a soundscape, illustrating how events at shrines, stone circles, isolated kivas, and great houses may have been heard at other locations as part of a sacred performance space.

During the past few decades, researchers have developed methodologies for understanding how past people have experienced their wider world. The majority of these reconstructions focused upon viewsheds and movement, illustrating how individuals visually observed their environment and navigated through it. However, these reconstructions have tended to ignore another sense which played a major role in how people experienced the wider, physical world: that of sound. While the topic of sound has been discussed within phenomenology at the theoretical level, and has been approached at the site level through the growing study of “acoustic archaeology,” it has not seen much practical application at the landscape level. This multimedia presentation illustrates how GIS technology can be utilized to develop soundscapes, exploring how people heard their wider surroundings, as well as saw them.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation manages approximately 4 million acres of state owned land and an additional 910,000 acres through conservation easements with the stated goal “to conserve, improve, and protect New York’s natural resources and environment….” New York state law interprets “environment” broadly, including cultural and historic resources within the concept. Thousands of archaeological sites, ranging from Archaic camps to Revolutionary War battlefields to historic mills, are located on, and enhance the value of, state land, and NYSDEC is charged with their conservation. This paper discusses the role that NYSDEC plays in managing these resources, and how the agency cooperates with colleges throughout the state as they conduct field schools on various sites. We will focus on the inherent contradictions present within the goal of “conserving” cultural resources, while also working with schools to obtain the information necessary to better manage those very resources for the public good and train future generations of archaeologists in the skills required to manage cultural resources.

During the past few decades, researchers have developed methodologies for understanding how past people experienced their wider world. The majority of these reconstructions focused upon viewsheds and movement, illustrating how individuals visually observed their environment and navigated through it. However, these reconstructions have tended to ignore another sense which played a major role in how people experienced the wider, physical world: that of sound. While the topic of sound has been discussed within phenomenology at the theoretical level, and has been approached at the site level through the growing study of “acoustic archaeology,” there has been limited practical application at the landscape level. This article illustrates how GIS technology can be utilized to model soundscapes, exploring how people heard their wider surroundings. Full article is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.05.044