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The reputed Neanderthal ‘flute’ from the Slovenian site of Divje babe I has stimulated much interest and detailed research since the original publication of its discovery in 1997. In spite of nearly ten years’ worth of analysis and discussion its status as an artefact has remained ambiguous; nevertheless it is still frequently cited as a ‘flute’. This paper examines in detail the full body of literature and research regarding this object, and finds that much of the ambiguity regarding the object’s status derives from the literature itself. It ultimately concludes that it is not necessary to invoke hominin agency in explaining the features of the bone.
AI
Research indicates that complex emotive-tonal vocalizations predated modern humans, linking early musical behaviors to social relationships much earlier than 60,000 years ago.
Recent Electron Spin Resonance dating established the bone's age at approximately 60,000 years BP, superseding earlier unreliable radiocarbon dates.
Arguments for human origin include their inexplicability by carnivore damage while opposing views emphasize greater likelihood of cave bears creating holes based on tooth damage patterns.
Unique hole shapes on the femur do not conform to typical carnivore practices, suggesting they might indicate different behaviors around 60,000 years ago.
The debated status of the bone raises questions about Neanderthal creativity, suggesting they may not have had the complex instrumental behaviors previously attributed to them.
From These Bare Bones : Raw materials and the study of worked osseous objects, 2013
Tubular bone artefacts of different size and form are commonly found in the Middle Neolithic inhumation burials in Gotland and Öland, Sweden. These burials were made by the people of the so-called Scandinavian Pitted Ware Culture. Small tubular artefacts have commonly been interpreted as beads used in decoration as they, in many cases, appear in clusters at the head region and along the body. In 1998 at Ajvide, archaeologists discovered a grave (62), which contained a large number of grave goods, among them tubular bone artefacts of an extraordinary character. Based on their outlook, these single or two-pieced artefacts with or without pierced holes were interpreted as flutes. Their suitability for sound production, however, has never been studied systematically. In this article, we will discuss the presence and function of the different tubular bone artefacts found in grave 62. We will describe the finds, sort them tentatively and report possible ethnographical parallels. The article is intended as an introduction to the research project, which seeks to analyze the organological structures of the artefacts and reassess their interpretation as musical instruments. The find contexts of the artefacts, as well as, the grave entity with all other artefacts, will be studied from the perspective of music archaeology.
All examples of bones of cave bear with holes from the period of the Middle Paleolithic and Early Upper Paleolithic that have been classified as flutes are discussed in this paper. Evidence is offered suggesting that in fact they are not flutes. The suggested pipe from Divje babe I is also discussed, which would belong to the same group of pseudo-artifacts. It is probably not a flute but reather a bone tha was pierced by some animal.
Archaeological small finds and their significance. Proceedings of the Symposium Games and Toys, 2017
Music is one of the earliest arts, and its origins are very important for the understanding of the human evolution. Musical behaviour is universal for all past and present communities, and is related to many ritual and leisure activities. The earliest musical instruments are discovered in the Early Upper Palaeolithic, and include mainly whistles and flutes. However, identification of sound-producing instruments in prehistory is a very difficult task, due to various reasons – one is poor preservation, but also the available data available are often ambiguous. In this paper an attempt will be made to identify all possible sound-producing instruments discovered so far in the Neolithic in the central Balkan area, to classify them, and finally to offer hypotheses on their significance and possible use. Artefacts include several possible bone flutes and also several rattles and they may have been used as toys as well as on festivals and in ritual activities.
Evolução, 2018
The article is an extended abstract: The author presents some examples of Palaeolithic flutes that use bird bones as raw material, such as the examples from Isturitz (French Pyrenees) and from the Jura Valley (Germany). After reviewing the published literature, he uses an input from music-archaeological research which argues that the existence of these flutes doesn’t mean that they would have been created initially with the intention of producing some kind of music and, therefore, that they should be considered as sound producing artefacts. As a method of research, also some acoustic tests with a replica of a Palaeolithic bone flute were made in the cave of Escoural (Portugal). Other functions, such as protective, cynegetic or ritual, besides musical instruments, are proposed to these flutes, being considered also the lightness of bird bones, when comparing them to thicker bones of other animals, for the quality of the acoustic performances of those sound producing artefacts. Key-words: Palaeolithic flutes; bird bones; archaeoacoustic.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
Organological evidence provides an important data for reconstruction of tonal organization in prehistoric music that most researchers deem forever unknown. Viktor Beliayev, an expert in tuning of Eurasian folk instruments, stressed that musical instruments with finger-holes and frets preserve historical stages in the development of melody by fixing those pitch values that prevail in culturally important music. Such instruments are equivalent to musical notation – they perpetuate modes that are most popular within a community. It is possible to "read" this notation following a set of principles proposed in this technical paper. This paper overviews the relative positioning of holes on all the recovered Paleolithic and Neolithic bone pipes. Distances between these holes represent the interval-sets in pitch-sets of music for which those bone pipes were designed.
Studien zur Musikarchäologie X: Klang – Objekt – Kultur – Geschichte. 9. Symposiums der Internationalen Studiengruppe Musikarchäologie im Ethnologischen Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, 9.–12. September 2014. Edited by R. Eichmann, L.-C. Koch, F. Jianjun. Verlag Marie Leidorf: Rahden/Westf., 2016
Master's thesis, University of Vienna, 2024
Music-archaeology is an interdisciplinary research field, researching past music and earlier sound concepts based on archaeological remains. It has long outgrown its first studies which were rooted in traditional musicology and cultural studies, and displaying a strong ethnological and Eurocentric bias. After experimental archaeology was implemented as a method throughout the 1980s, it has evolved to a vivid research field. Music-archaeology today includes different research areas like neurology, psycho acoustics, behavioural studies, iconography, textile archaeology, professional instrument making and composition. When a bone artefact was found in Großrust, Lower Austria, during the summer of 2022, it raised questions due to the first interpretation as an Early Iron Age flute assigned by the excavators. This thesis evaluates and interprets how and when the object was possibly used and shows that the initial interpretation as a musical instrument or sound object is most likely. Its dating to the Early Iron Age could be confirmed by accompanying pottery finds and the archaeological findings connected to the artefact themselves. Further, it was demonstrated that an interpretation of the Großrust artefact other than a sound object seems unlikely by listing com parative finds. In addition, it could be shown by experimental reconstructions as different types of wind instruments that the object plays well as a simple duct flute or a hunting whistle.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SMALL FINDS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SYMPOSIUM ON GAMES AND TOYS, 2017
In this article we seek to integrate theories of music origins and dance with hominin fossil anatomy and the paleoecological contexts of hominin evolution. Based on the association between rhythm in music, dance and locomotion, we propose that early bipedal hominins may have evolved neurobiological substrates different from other great apes due to the rhythmic aspects of bipedal walking and running. Combined with the emancipation of the hands resulting from erect posture, we propose that the neurobiological changes necessary for technological innovation, cultural practices and human musical abilities may have evolved, at least in incipient form, much earlier than previously thought. The consequent ability to synchronize movement and sound production may have also proved beneficial as early bipedal hominins ventured out of late Miocene and early Pliocene woodland and forested habitats and into more open habitats with increased predation risk. We also postulate that, along with bipedalism, paedomorphic morphogenesis of the skull at the base of the hominin clade was a necessary prerequisite for the evolution of vocal modulation and singing in later varieties of hominin. To date research into the evolution of music and dance has yet to be integrated with the fossil and paleoecological evidence of early hominin evolution. This paper seeks to fill this lacuna in the extant literature on human evolution. We also suggest that autocatalytic feedback loops evolving synergistically with hominin erect posture, skull and hand morphology, neurochemical processes and the self-domestication syndrome, have been operative from early hominins some 6 Ma to the present. We document this process by reference to primatological, ethnographic, neurochemical and archaeological data.
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L'Anthropologie, 2018
In 1995, an unusually perforated femur of a juvenile cave bear was found in the Divje babe I Palaeolithic cave site in Slovenia. The supposition that it could be a flute led to heated debates. According to its archaeological context and chronostratigraphic position, if made by humans, it could only be attributed to Neanderthals. The crucial question was related to the origin of the holes. These could only have been made either by a carnivore or by human § The paper is dedicated to the memory of Ljuben Dimkaroski.
Applied Sciences, 2020
The paper is a critical review of different evidence for the interpretation of an extremely important archaeological find, which is marked by some doubt. The unique find, a multiple perforated cave bear femur diaphysis, from the Divje babe I cave (Slovenia), divided the opinions of experts, between those who advocate the explanation that the find is a musical instrument made by a Neanderthal, and those who deny it. Ever since the discovery, a debate has been running on the basis of this division, which could only be closed by similar new finds with comparable context, and defined relative and absolute chronology.
Current Anthropology, 1998
Antiquity, 1998
No Stradivarius ever attracted such a large au-dience as the recent discovery of the Divje Babe I perforated cave-bear femur, described by the finders as possibly the oldest musical instru-ment found in Europe (Turk et al. 1995; 1996; 1997; Lau et al. 1996). The use of the object as a ...
SUYANGGAE AND HER NEIGHBOURS IN HAIFA, ISRAEL, 2017
The emergence of musical (phone) instruments, as the simplest complex, the development of musical traditions are clearly a sign of the complex and behavioral strategies of the modern Human and is associated with the context of a broad spectrum of the innovations in the culture at an early stage of the Upper Paleolithic. It needs to be noted that the music is both cultural and biological phenomenon, and interdisciplinary approach to studying the origins musical creativity will attract additional resources to address this problem, and each of them in turn increases the value and legality of the fndings. The question of the genesis and evolution of musical creativity, its early stages and diffusion of musical culture in Paleolithic time is controversial in archaeology according unique items of the excavation some Upper Paleolithic sites in Northern part of Eurasia. One of the main problems faced by Music Archaeology is the identifcation, defnition and classifcation of musical (phone) instruments in the archaeological record. The series of aerophones of the Eurasian Aurignacian, the complex of percussion phone instruments of the Gravettian indicate the existence of stable musical traditions in the Upper Paleolithic. The integrative investigation of the musical complexes of Siberia and Ukraine Upper Paleolithic are based on the principles of morpho-technology, typological study and use-wear analysis, as well as experiments associated with the archaeological contexts.
EXARC Journal, 2021
At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, in the town of Turku (SW Finland), a new quarter was built near a lake that came to be known as Mätäjärvi (‘Rotten Lake’), possibly because it was polluted by the waste from leather tanners, shoemakers, and other artisans. In the excavated remains of a wooden house in this quarter, objects like leather shoes, clippings and scrapings, imported stoneware from Germany, bone beads, spindles, and numerous bones of young cats, dogs, sheep, pigs and cattle were found, allowing the conclusion this might have been an artisan’s dwelling. On the premises, a part of a worked sheep shin bone was found that we have interpreted as a flute of the block-and-duct type with two or three finger holes. This is a rare find for Finland, where, contrary to other parts of Europe, only a very small number of bone wind instruments are known, all dating from the late Middle Ages and nearly all found in Turku. This flute was a coarsely made simple instrument with a small ambitus. In many regions, flutes were traditionally played by shepherds as a means to communicate with their flock and as entertainment while herding. As we know that sheep and other domestic animals were kept in Turku, it is tempting to interpret the flute as a shepherd’s instrument, but sources pertaining to the use of this particular artefact are lacking. We made two hypothetical reconstructions of the flute from similarly shaped and sized unprovenanced medieval sheep shin bones, one with two finger holes and the other with three finger holes. Flutist and sound artist Taina Saarikivi then explored the musical possibilities of the three-holed reconstruction by experimenting with it for over a year, making this medieval instrument sound or sing again.
Current Anthropology, 2015
The production of sound is a significant human capacity that is used, through the generation of feelings and emotions, for conditioning social and biological reproduction. Despite this elevance and although several hundred instruments have been attributed to the production of sound along the Upper Paleolithic, our knowledge of how and in what contexts music was played during this period is still quite limited. In this paper, the aerophone found in the Davant Pau excavation, in the northeast part of the Iberian Peninsula, dated to 23,000 years cal BP, is studied to infer, through experimentation and microwear analysis, how it was made and used. It is a whistletype instrument that would have allowed the production of an almost monotonic sound, which could be acutely syncopated, generating a fast rhythm. This is a type of sound most probably used in collective ceremonies in which the coordination of the participants was important, as observed in several ethnographic studies of hunter-gatherer groups.
Experiencing archaeology by experiment, 2008
In stratigraphic levels associated with the early Upper Palaeolithic, reputed "sound-tools" have been discovered in the form of bone and ivory pipes at the sites of Geißenklösterle, Germany and the Grotte d’Isturitz, France. The technical sophistication of these objects holds out the promise that other archaeologically durable materials, such as stone, may have been exploited for quasi-musical behaviours. Other types of stone artefacts, though generally interpreted as "tools", might well have been used as "sound tools", or lithophones. This paper reports the results of acoustical and use-wear analyses of experimentally made Aurignacian-type blades with the intention of specifying diagnostic criteria that could aid the identification of lithic artefacts in the archaeological record that may have been employed to produce sound. The project takes forward and expands on the methodology of the original Lithoacoustics project (Cross et al 2002) in order to identify and to refine objective criteria for acoustical assessment and to clarify the nature of use-wear resulting from different playing methods.
Antiquity, 2022
The microscopic analysis of tool marks on objects from the Late Bronze Age 'shaman's grave' at Przeczyce, Poland, has demonstrated that two wild boar tusk pendants, a bone disc and a set of bone tubes were manufactured exclusively using metal tools. We argue that the tubes were a musical instrument that originally consisted of several separate pieces, rather than a pan flute, as has previously been suggested.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2015
Percussion makes a vital link between the activities of early human ancestors and other animals in tool-use and tool-making. Far more of the early human actions are preserved as archaeology, since the percussion was largely used for making hard tools of stone, rather than for direct access to food. Both primate tools and early hominin tools, however, offer a means to exploring variability in material culture, a strong focus of interest in recent primate studies. This paper charts such variability in the Acheulean, the longest-lasting tool tradition, extant form about 1.7 to about 0.1 Ma, and well known for its characteristic handaxes. The paper concentrates on the African record, although the Acheulean was also known in Europe and Asia. It uses principal components and discriminant analysis to examine the measurements from 66 assemblages (whole toolkits), and from 18 sets of handaxes. Its review of evidence confirms that there is deep-seated pattern in the variation, with variabilit...