The lost instruments of Teotihuacan will soon be heard again

[Judi Lynn]

Science & technology
Jun 4th 2020 edition


Palaeo-musicology

An ancient city is about to have its “soundscape” recorded

One afternoon last December Arnd Adje Both, a researcher at Huddersfield University, in Britain, stood on top of the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan, in Mexico, and blew into a conch-shell trumpet, sounding a note that echoed in the plaza far below. Later this year—covid-19 permitting—he hopes to return with a group of colleagues to conduct an aural examination of the site using replicas of the ancient instruments dug up there.

Teotihuacan is a mysterious place. Once home to more than 100,000 people, at its zenith around 1,500 years ago it was among the biggest cities in the world. Its inhabitants, though, had no known system of writing. Even the city’s original name is unknown. “Teotihuacan”, meaning “birthplace of the gods”, is what the deserted settlement was called by the Aztecs, who took over control of what is now central Mexico in about 1300ad, some 650 years after the city was abandoned. All that is known about Teotihuacan’s inhabitants and their culture is what archaeologists have pieced together from the remaining buildings and other artefacts.

Dr Both’s curiosity about the music-making of these elusive people goes back to the 1990s. He took part in one of his first excavations at Teotihuacan. While doing so he got to know a group of Mexican musical-instrument makers and became interested in crafting replicas of the site’s double-chambered water-sounding vessels (pictured above), which whistle when water moves from one chamber to the other, quadruple flute pipes and other strange instruments. He has since spent many months in the collections of the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, and other institutes, plotting the dimensions and workings of these finds.

Since the genuine articles are too delicate and valuable to play, he has teamed up with Osvaldo Padrón, an instrument-maker in Amsterdam, to create replicas. He is not looking to reproduce pre-Columbian tunes on these facsimiles. The inhabitants’ apparent societal aliteracy extended to musical notation, so there are no scores to interpret. But by recording the replicas being played in their native site he nevertheless hopes to gain a better purchase on how sound moved around the ancient city.

More:
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/06/04/the-lost-instruments-of-teotihuacan-will-soon-be-heard-again

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