“Where words fail, music speaks.” - Hans Christian Andersen
Music speaks to us across time. I can set out sheet music and play a piece written two hundred years ago or I can listen to an early jazz record from the 1920s. The composers are no longer here, but their music, in this way, connects us to them. The same is true of artifacts.
An Ode to the Dead
These three bone flutes were excavated at an archaeological site in La Real, Peru and are old. In fact, they are between 1,000 and 1,400 years old. And although the artisan is no longer here, we are connected to them through the stories the artifacts tell. The flutes are made of camelid bones, camelids being animals such as llamas and alpacas, which have historically been important to various Andean cultures.
Music was as fundamental to their lives as it is to ours today, being a feature of funerals, festivals, and feasts. Researchers believe that the flutes were made for one of these feasts or communal meals.
It’s likely that the shepherds would have been close to the animals they raised and selected for feasts. “…If an animal’s identity remained known throughout the event, then each animal’s ‘voice’ would have been remembered in the sounds the instrument made. The very way breath is expelled to create sound in a wind instrument is, in its own way, also an ode to the dead,” said Aleksa Alaica of the University of British Columbia in the March/April 2023 issue of Archeology Magazine. Here we have another connection, one between animal and musician.
Music Beyond Flutes
Music of this time was not only limited to flutes. Spanish documents from the sixteenth century describe other instruments in the Andes, including panpipes, rattles, ocarinas, and drums. Music has been woven into our lives for millennia and is a connection to those around us as well as those that lived long before.
I think this might be what’s behind Instrumental Archaeology. I’m excited to find connections and dig into the history of different instruments to see how they impact people and cultures. As people travel they bring new ideas, and often their music comes along too.
If you are curious, here is a clip of the flutes being played.
Sources:
Bernier, Hélène. Music in the Ancient Andes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2010, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/muan/hd_muan.htm.
Lobell, Jarrett A. Artifact. Archaeology Magazine, March/April 2023, https://www.archaeology.org/issues/506-2303/artifact/11227-artifact-peru-camelid-bone-instruments
Further Reading:
Here are a few articles of other flutes found in the archaeological record. You can read about:
A 600-800 year old flute from medieval England here.
9,000 year old bone flutes from China here.
12,000 year old bone flutes from Israel here.
Thank you for reading and supporting this newsletter. The best way to show support is by liking and sharing. If you would like to read more here is a link to my previous article, Evening, the last of my solo piano releases.