Past and Present Soundscapes and Musical Instruments: Between Ethnography and Archaeology

This panel intends to focus on methodologies and perspectives of research on music that use both historical and archaeological sources, even ancient ones, to better understand the ethnographic present, as well as ethnographic sources to illuminate the past. The study of past oral-tradition musics presents several challenges that require methodologies and theoretical perspectives other than those explored by traditional historical musicology. The variety of sources (archaeological, iconographical, literary and archaeoacoustical) calls for an interdisciplinary assessment. Moreover, the interpretation of these sources involves a close interconnection between archaeological and archaeoacoustical data as well as ethnomusicological theory and knowledge.