Archaeologists make music with Neolithic marine horns

BarcelonaIt was known that men and women used marine horns to communicate until the mid-20th century. And they were still used, until seven or eight decades ago, by itinerant fishmongers when they wanted to sell their wares in the Ripollès region and the Pyrenees, or by the Ebro riverboatmen to announce the arrival and departure of vessels, or to warn of fog. "They are highly effective long-distance communication tools and, in addition, could have served as musical instruments, because they can produce a very loud sound and allow for very effective control of their intensity," says Miquel López-Garcia, archaeologist and researcher at the University of Barcelona. To demonstrate his hypothesis, López-Garcia, who is also a professional trumpet player, took Neolithic marine horns preserved in various Catalan museums, such as the Vinseum, the Barcelona History Museum, and the Gavà Museum, and played them to study their sound qualities. The results have been published in the magazine Antiquity from the University of Cambridge. "We knew that several shells had been discovered of Charonia lampas "In a relatively small area of Catalonia, specifically in the lower reaches of the Llobregat River and in the Penedès Pre-coastal Depression, east of Barcelona," explains Margarita Díaz-Andreu, co-author of the research and professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) at the University of Barcelona. This has led researchers to suggest that they could have functioned as musical instruments. Researchers believe this could indicate that different communities used them to communicate. "The use of shells as musical instruments and as powerful communication tools transforms how we understand sound, space, and social cohesion in early prehistoric societies," concludes Díaz-Andreu.