Sound archaeology: terminology, Palaeolithic cave art and the soundscape

This article is focused on the ways that terminology describing the study of music and sound within archaeology has changed over time, and how this reflects developing methodologies, exploring the expectations and issues raised by the use of differing kinds of language to define and describe such work. It begins with a discussion of music archaeology, addressing the problems of using the term ‘music’ in an archaeological context. It continues with an examination of archaeoacoustics and acoustics, and an emphasis on sound rather than music. This leads on to a study of sound archaeology and soundscapes, pointing out that it is important to consider the complete acoustic ecology of an archaeological site, in order to identify its affordances, those possibilities offered by invariant acoustic properties. Using a case study from northern Spain, the paper suggests that all of these methodological approaches have merit, and that a project benefits from their integration

Distant echoes: evoking the soundscapes of the past in the radio documentary series Noise: a human history

This article asks whether radio can ever successfully evoke an accurate sense of the sound of the past. It does so through a reflective critical analysis of the 2013 BBC Radio 4 documentary series, Noise: A Human History, by its own writer and presenter. It explores how the ‘sound design’ of the series met the challenge of providing a longue durée history of sound without having recourse to authentic sound archive recordings for most of the period being covered. Through an analysis of key sequences, and by highlighting the significance of the broader context of production, it argues that it is possible for epistemologically valuable history to emerge, even via a medium that treats sound more as a device for evoking the imagination than as something possessing evidential status in itself. The article does this by invoking the series as a practical example of ‘historical acoustemology’, and by suggesting that in radio notions of subjectivity and perceptual mimesis are key to understanding the medium's success. In doing so, the article calls for a redefinition of the notion of the radiogenic – arguing for a move away from seeing ‘raw’ sound as the key ingredient of sound design, and towards greater attention to the influence of radio's other characteristics as a time-based, institutionally-produced mass medium

Early invaders - Farmers, the granary weevil and other uninvited guests in the Neolithic

The Neolithic and the spread of agriculture saw several introductions of insect species associated with the environments and activities of the first farmers. Fossil insect research from the Neolithic lake settlement of Dispilio in Macedonia, northern Greece, provides evidence for the early European introduction of a flightless weevil, the granary weevil, Sitophilus granarius, which has since become cosmopolitan and one of the most important pests of stored cereals. The records of the granary weevil from the Middle Neolithic in northern Greece illuminate the significance of surplus storage for the spread of agriculture. The granary weevil and the house fly, Musca domestica were also introduced in the Neolithic of central Europe, with the expansion of Linear Band Keramik (LBK) culture groups. This paper reviews Neolithic insect introductions in Europe, including storage pests, discusses their distribution during different periods and the reasons behind the trends observed. Storage farming may be differentiated from pastoral farming on the basis of insect introductions arriving with incoming agricultural groups

Settlement Patterns and Landscape Change: The Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age of the Marais Poitevin Area of Western France

It is, with a few exceptions, only in very recent years and with works such as that by Guilaine and his colleagues on the Abri Jean-Cros (Guilaineet al.1979) that the site locational and ecological approaches have made their appearance in the French archaeological literature. Studies of this type are still not common, despite the richness of certain areas of France in prehistoric settlement evidence and the existence of a body of geomorphological research which often makes this type of approach particularly attractive. The present article attempts to use both geomorphological and settlement evidence for a consideration of the relationship between changes in the landscape and patterns of site distribution in the Marais poitevin area of western France during the period 2800–600 bc.The basis for the study is provided by locational information on a series of Late Neolithic fortified settlement sites which has been discovered in this part of France in recent years. These impressive sites have a striking distribution pattern which invites interpretation in terms of their landscape setting. Geomorphological and archaeological evidence makes it possible to reconstruct at least in outline the development of this landscape during the later prehistoric period, and to suggest what it may have been like at the time the sites were occupied and how it may have affected their foundation and their abandonment. The evidence relating to landscape development is crucial to our understanding of the prehistoric sites and no apology is made for considering it in some detail below. Bronze Age as well as Neolithic sites have been included in the final analysis. This allows the Late Neolithic fortified settlements to be viewed in a broader context and related to changes in site distribution patterns over a period of approximately two thousand years.</jats:p

J.S. Mill’s Canons of Induction: from True Causes to Provisional Ones

In this essay, my aim is twofold: to clarify how the late Mill conceived of the certainty of inductive generalizations and to offer a systematic clarification of the limited domain of application of the Mill’s Canons of Induction. I shall argue that Mill’s views on the certainty of knowledge changed overtime and that this change was accompanied by a new view on the certainty of the inductive results yielded by the Canons of Induction. The key message of the later editions of The System of Logic as conceived by the late Mill was no longer that by the Canons of Induction we can establish scientific certainty and true causes, but rather that the Canons are useful in establishing causal laws in a provisional way