Engraved aurochs, Grotte de Marsoulas, France. Internet image, Public Domain.
Marsoulis, Photo Heinrich Wendel, donsmaps.com.
I have previously posted a number of columns about rock art acoustics including some looking at the question of music at rock art sites (see the cloud index at the bottom of this site). On March 28,2010, I wrote about “Music At Rock Art Sites” speculating about mouth-bows and also mentioning Paleolithic flutes. On May 28, 2011, I wrote “The Flute-Playing Armadillo.” On October 6, 2018, I wrote about the “San Luis Valley Lithophones.” On July 20, 2019, I wrote “Rock Art Acoustics: Intentional, Accidental, or Irrelevant,” and on November 9, 2019, I wrote about “Music in Rock Art - Dong Son Drums In Indonesia.” (I do not, at this time, intend to revisit the subject of rock art and echoes which I have previously addressed extensively).
Conch shell trumpet, Grotte de Marsoulas, France. Photograph C. Fritz and G. Tosello.
In this article I am revisiting the theme of Music At Rock Art Sites with a conch shell trumpet that was found at the Grotte de Marsoulas, France. Discovered in the cave in 1931, and dated to 18000 BP, the “patterns painted on the inner-surface of the shell’s opening are done in the same style as those on the walls of the cave.” (Wikipedia-Marsoulas Cave)
The reason that we can confidently relate the conch-shell trumpet to the rock art is that the wall of the cave is areas of red paint decoration of dot patterns done with human fingertips, and the inside of the bell of the shell also has red-painted fingerprint dots in it, seemingly a direct correlation. This particular shell is “a large specimen of C.(Charonia) Lampas (Linnaeus, 1758), a mollusk originating from the North-East Atlantic and the North Sea.” (Fritz et al. 2021)
A conch shell is made into a trumpet by breaking or grinding off the point or apex whorls (technically the protoconch) of the shell and blowing in it as into a trumpet mouthpiece if the hole is large enough, or inserting a hollow tube to use as a mouthpiece if the hole is smaller. It is not enough to just pass air out of the mouth, the lips are tightened so that there is a vibration between them. The sound reverberates within the shell and comes out the large opening.
“Discoverers of the conch shell at the cave’s entrance in 1931 thought it had been used as a shared drinking container. But microscopic and imaging examinations indicate that someone had cut off the shell’s narrow end to create a small opening, the scientists report February 10 in Science Advances.” (Bower 2021)
Note that the “discoverers of the conch shell at the cave’s entrance in 1931 thought it had been used as a shared drinking container.” This would be right in line with early archaeological designations of anything not immediately understood as ritual or ceremonial, a “shared drinking container” would have been assumed to be used in rituals or ceremonies.
The musicality of the shell was tested by actually playing it. “The seashell was entrusted to a musicologist and horn player, specializing in wind instruments. The mouthpiece was protected to blow into the retouched extremity of the apex. To play the shell, the musician vibrated his lips in the manner necessary to play the trumpet or the trombone. The musician thus chooses the vibration frequency among the possible resonances of the air column via the muscular tension of the lips and the control of the air mass moving in the tube.
Several high-quality notes were produced, corresponding to the natural resonances of the conch shell. The lowest note is close to C and the two others are respectively close to a C-sharp and a D, equaling a halftone each time. During the experiments, the musician remarked that the apex in its current chipped form is not functional because it could injure the lips of the instrumentalist. He thinks that an intermediary tube was probably necessary to remedy this problem, and he proposed the hypothesis that a mouthpiece was present when it was used during the Magdalenian period.” (Fritz 2021)
The notes produced were in the order of 100 decibels measured one meter from the outlet of the shell. ”A cylindrical mouthpiece, possibly a hollow bird bone was inserted in the hole they suspect. Brownish traces of a resin or wax around the opening may have come from a glue for the mouthpiece.” (Bower 2021) Or indeed, a mouthpiece may have been shaped from the brown organic resin or wax. Modern brass instruments like trumpets, trombones, etc., possess a cup-shaped mouthpiece with an opening that is considerably larger than a bird bone would allow, but the brown organic residue around the hole at the apex suggests that some sort of mouthpiece had been fashioned.
Could this conch shell trumpet be used to play music during a ceremony at Marsoulas, possibly involving the caves painted and engraved imagery? Music - no, with the limited range of notes you cannot produce what I would call music.Remember, other than the human voice, there were relatively few ways to make actual music 18,000 years ago. But, one could produce impressive 100 decibel blasts of sound that would sound unnatural, and very impressive, to any audience, and might be considered to add an otherworldly air to the proceedings.
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
Bower, Bruce, 2021, Humans Made A Horn Out Of A Conch Shell About 18,000 Years Ago, February 10, 2021, www.sciencenews.org
Fritz, C., et al, 2021, First Record of the Sound Produced by the Oldest Upper Paleolithic Seashell Horn, February 10, 2021, https://advances.sciencemag.org
Wikipedia, Marsoulas Cave, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsoulas_Cave
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment