Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places

Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places
Author: Margarita Díaz-Andreu
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2024-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Archaeoacoustics, the study of sound in the past, is increasingly attracting attention. Although some work, particularly in musical archaeology, had been conducted previously, the field received a significant boost when the term itself was coined by Scarre and Lawson in their 2006 volume of that name, which brought together two major distinct strands: archaeomusicology and the acoustics of archaeological spaces. Since 2006, the number of publications has steadily been growing, yet the field remains in its infancy. This is partly due to the complexity inherent in the analysis of sound, which requires multidisciplinary collaboration across various disciplines. This complexity is reflected in the approaches followed and the contributors from diverse academic fields, including not only archaeology but also anthropology, architecture, classics, history, art history, and sound engineering. The aim is to provide an overview of a selection of the different topics covered by the field of archaeoacoustics. Contributors aspire to advancing the field through innovative approaches, including those stemming from psychology, a field not commonly associated with archaeology. Additionally, the book seeks to expand the field by developing a number of new ideas based on novel case studies. It presents some of the results derived from major research projects, such as the ERC funded Artsoundscapes and the Soundspace projects led by Díaz-Andreu and Knighton, respectively. The book will cover a wide range of topics, including a synthetic history of research provided in the introduction, theories about the origins of music in early humans, experimental archaeomusicology, approaches from the fields of neuroacoustics and psychoacoustics, experimental studies of portable and fixed lithophones and other musical instruments, explorations of soundscapes, representations of sound in early medieval frescoes, late medieval urbanscapes, and post-medieval proxemics. Case studies are located in America, Asia, and Europe.

The Ancient Language of Sacred Sound

The Ancient Language of Sacred Sound
Author: David Elkington
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1644111667

• Details how sacred sites resonate at the same frequencies as both the Earth and the alpha waves of the human brain • Shows how human writing in its original hieroglyphic form was a direct response to the divine sound patterns of sacred sites • Explains how ancient hero myths from around the world relate to divine acoustic science and formed the source of religion The Earth resonates at an extremely low frequency. Known as “the Schumann Resonance,” this natural rhythm of the Earth precisely corresponds with the human brain’s alpha wave frequencies--the frequency at which we enter into and come out of sleep as well as the frequency of deep meditation, inspiration, and problem solving. Sound experiments reveal that sacred sites and structures like stupas, pyramids, and cathedrals also resonate at these special frequencies when activated by chanting and singing. Did our ancestors build their sacred sites according to the rhythms of the Earth? Exploring the acoustic connections between the Earth, the human brain, and sacred spaces, David Elkington shows how humanity maintained a direct line of communication with Mother Earth and the Divine through the construction of sacred sites, such as Stonehenge, Newgrange, Machu Picchu, Chartres Cathedral, and the pyramids of both Egypt and Mexico. He reveals how human writing in its original hieroglyphic form was a direct response to the divine sound patterns of sacred sites, showing how, for example, recognizable hieroglyphs appear in sand patterns when the sacred frequencies of the Great Pyramid are activated. Looking at ancient hero legends--those about the bringers of important knowledge or language--Elkington explains how these myths form the source of ancient religion and have a unique mythological resonance, as do the sites associated with them. The author then reveals how religion, including Christianity, is an ancient language of acoustic science given expression by the world’s sacred sites and shows that power places played a profound role in the development of human civilization.

Sound and the Ancient Senses

Sound and the Ancient Senses
Author: Shane Butler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317300424

Sound leaves no ruins and no residues, even though it is experienced constantly. It is ubiquitous but fleeting. Even silence has sound, even absence resonates. Sound and the Ancient Senses aims to hear the lost sounds of antiquity, from the sounds of the human body to those of the gods, from the bathhouse to the Forum, from the chirp of a cicada to the music of the spheres. Sound plays so great a role in shaping our environments as to make it a crucial sounding board for thinking about space and ecology, emotions and experience, mortality and the divine, orality and textuality, and the self and its connection to others. From antiquity to the present day, poets and philosophers have strained to hear the ways that sounds structure our world and identities. This volume looks at theories and practices of hearing and producing sounds in ritual contexts, medicine, mourning, music, poetry, drama, erotics, philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics, vocality, and on the page, and shows how ancient ideas of sound still shape how and what we hear today. As the first comprehensive introduction to the soundscapes of antiquity, this volume makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning fields of sound and voice studies and is the final volume of the series, The Senses in Antiquity.

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt
Author: Stephen Quirke
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1444332007

Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt offers a stimulating overview of the study of ancient Egyptian religion by examining research drawn from beyond the customary boundaries of Egyptology and shedding new light on entrenched assumptions. Discusses the evolution of religion in ancient Egypt – a belief system that endured for 3,000 years Dispels several modern preconceptions about ancient Egyptian religious practices Reveals how people in ancient Egypt struggled to secure well-being in the present life and the afterlife

Megalithomania

Megalithomania
Author: John Michell
Publisher: Ingram
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2007-04-03
Genre: Menhirs
ISBN: 9781906069032

A feast of extraordinary theories and personalities centred around the mysterious standing stones of antiquity. John Michell tells the incredible story of the amazing reactions, ancient and modern, to these prehistoric relics, whether astronomical, legendary, mystical or visionary.

You Are in Ancient Greece

You Are in Ancient Greece
Author: Ivan Minnis
Publisher: Capstone Classroom
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2005
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781410910097

This book describes what it was like to live in Athens, a city-state of ancient Greece about 460 B.C.E.

Symbolic Home: Exploring ancient feng shui roots for contemporary practice

Symbolic Home: Exploring ancient feng shui roots for contemporary practice
Author: Sofia Batalha
Publisher: Sofia Batalha
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2020-05-23
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN:

Have you ever heard of Feng Shui, but everything you read seems confusing and contradictory? You don't know how to go from theory to practice and there are rules that are abstract and random to you? You've never heard of Feng Shui, but do you feel the Home is more than just four walls? The Symbolic Home Feng Shui Practice The Symbolic Feng Shui method is based on the millenary concepts of Feng Shui adapted to the here and now. A method that allows one to see and feel the Home far beyond its form/function, giving it an emotional and symbolic dimension. In this way, each division is an individual spatial identity with its own symbology, structure, and emotions. The book serves as a starting point for a full and conscious experience of private space. Start changing today!

Gods and Robots

Gods and Robots
Author: Adrienne Mayor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691202265

Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.

Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece

Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece
Author: Jill Gordon
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253062845

Hearing, Sound, and the Auditory in Ancient Greece represents the first wide-ranging philosophical study of the role of sound and hearing in the ancient Greek world. Because our modern western culture is a particularly visual one, we can overlook the significance of the auditory which was so central to the Greeks. The fifteen chapters of this edited volume explore "hearing" as being philosophically significant across numerous texts and figures in ancient Greek philosophy. Through close analysis of the philosophy of such figures as Homer, Heraclitus, Pythagoreans, Sophocles, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hearing, Sound, and Auditory in Ancient Greece presents new and unique research from philosophers and classicists that aims to redirect us to the ways in which sound, hearing, listening, voice, and even silence shaped and reflected the worldview of ancient Greece.

The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World

The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World
Author: Trevor Cox
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-02-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393239799

A professor of acoustic engineering provides a tour of the world's most amazing sound phenomena, including creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, humming dunes, seals that sound like alien angels, and a Mayan pyramid that chirps like a bird.