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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2024

Sound Leaves no Trace, or Does It?

Le son ne laisse pas de trace, et pourtant !

Iégor Reznikoff
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Résumé

As evidence of activity of prehistoric tribes, sound is certainly the most intangible. However, an evidence of prehistoric musical practices is clearly seen by the presence of musical instruments, bone whistles, rhombuses (bull-roars) and particularly flutes, found in prehistoric sites. If these archaeological discoveries prove the practice, they say nothing concerning sounds and music, how or when they were used, and nothing concerning voice which is, as ethnomusicology teaches us, the main instrument of human beings, particularly in rituals. However, there are also other remarkable musical instruments: painted caves and landscapes surrounding painted rocks. Most of them are giant resonators, to be understood in the case of closed spaces, as sonorous pipes, where the sound is not pro-duced by the wind of breath but directly by the voice remarkably amplified by some locations in the cave. There is an evident agreement that ancient sounds, before the invention of phonograph, left no traces. However, there are obvious signs and landmarks of sounds pro-duced by these giant resonators, used as such in caves: in many cases, these signs are the paintings themselves. Indeed, we have shown that in many painted caves (Reznikoff, 1987a, 1987b and 2012a), as well as in open-air rock art sites, in Finland, Provence, Spain or Mexico. (Reznikoff, 2002; Rainio et al., 2014; Díaz-Andreu et al., 2017; Rainio, 2018), there is a high connection between locations of pictures and the sound quality of such locations. To put it simply: the stronger the resonance, the more pictures there are. Men of prehistoric times obviously had a very fine hearing (necessary e.g. for hunting), and naturally tested the resonance in various parts of a cave when exploring it and proceeding into its mystery in almost complete darkness. We have shown that during first explorations and discovery of a cave, echoes and echolocation techniques were used: red dots are often marks corresponding to resonance maxima. Actually, the use of vocal sounds and echolocation seems to be necessary; it tells where to go: if ahead there are many echoes, the space there is larger than from a direction with almost no echoes, and if the echo comes from below, it means there is presumably a pit and the best to do is to withdraw backwards. Once the cave was discovered and better known, prehistoric tribes preferably chose the most resonant locations for paintings, this is shown by our studies and the reason for that is straightforward: in relation with paintings, the tribes sang and performed music. The same appears to be true for paintings and echoes in open air. Paintings and dots are therefore often visible signs of invisible sounds. Since the first discoveries in 1983 (see Reznikoff and Dauvois, 1988), this discipline has developed under the name of archaeo-acoustics. The method we used is essentially vocal, however strictly scientific; the quality of resonance is measured in seconds for the duration of the sound, in hertz for frequencies (or pitches relative to A 440 Hz), and with a sonometer for intensity if needed. The best way to compare resonance in various parts of the cave is, actually, to count the number of echoes given in return to vocal sounds e.g., using the vowel “O” on D-C, with D around 300 Hz and C around 260 Hz, with, for echoes, an intensity around 90 dB. A male voice is necessary because of dimensions of most caves; however, once the best sonorous parts have been dis-covered and painted, female and children voices certainly contributed to rituals and possible ceremonies. The advantage of this vocal method is that it is straightforward and can be used in any location, niches or narrow tunnels where one has to crawl on the ground. Moreover, this method is anthropological; echoes, because of the simplicity of the technique, were certainly used by prehistoric tribes, this is proved by our studies, while purely electronic devices, of course, are not anthropological, and cannot be used in narrow tunnels or niches; moreover, most of these devices are not adapted to the study of deep resonance. The first discovery of a picture is given by vision, as the discovery of animal species; it is only afterwards that various devices can be used for chemical analysis of colours, for dating, etc. The same is true concerning acoustics; the first discovery and awareness of a resonance must be given by listening to the answer of sounds, preferably vocal, since vocal sounds are of course the most manageable as mentioned above, and the most sensitive. One or two echoes are not really significant, because one echo can be obtained almost everywhere at an appropriate distance, and two echoes are not a rare phenomenon, three or four echoes are already meaningful, but five and more echoes show a good or respectively a very good resonance. The Salon Noir, at the Niaux cave, is rich of up to nine echoes, but this is exceptional, and it is where there are large frescoes with bison and other animals. We found the same connection in the Kapova cave (Urals). We present results obtained, in particular, in the caves of Portel, Niaux, Isturitz, Oxocelhaya, Arcy-sur-Cure and in the Kapova cave. In the Portel cave for instance, the correlation is about 80% of pictures in the best resonant parts of the cave, and close to 90% in Niaux. In some caves (Arcy-sur-Cure, Kapova), the density of pictures is proportional to the number of echoes (table 1 and table 2). Because of this high correlation, we can state that if there are no proper musical signs, there are pictorial signs revealing them; the acoustic study in most of the caves we have studied (provided the geology and space have not changed since prehistoric times) makes it possible to demonstrate this strong relationship between sounds and pictures, the later revealing themselves as sound landmarks.
L’évidence de pratiques musicales préhistoriques se voit matériellement par la présence d’instruments de musique, et par-ticulièrement de flûtes trouvées dans des sites préhistoriques. Si ces découvertes archéologiques prouvent bien la pratique, elles ne disent rien quant aux usages des sons, aux lieux privilégiés dans la pratique des sociétés préhistoriques, et rien sur la voix. Il est admis que les sons du passé, avant l’invention du phonographe, n’ont pas laissé de traces. Or, dans les grottes ornées, et surtout à peintures, il y a des signes étonnamment manifestes qui témoignent d’une pratique sonore : ce sont souvent les peintures elles-mêmes. En effet, on a pu montrer dans de nombreuses grottes ornées (Reznikoff, 1987a et 1987b ; Reznikoff et Dauvois, 1988, et, pour une étude plus récente, Reznikoff, 2012a) ainsi que dans des sites d’art rupestre en plein air une très grande concordance entre l’emplacement des images et la qualité sonore de l’emplacement. Pour le dire simplement : dans les grottes, plus l’endroit est sonore, plus il y a d’images. Les hommes des temps préhistoriques, à l’écoute évidemment très fine (une nécessité, par exemple, pour la chasse), utilisaient donc beaucoup la résonance des diverses parties des grottes et choisissaient de préférence des endroits sonores pour les peintures. On peut montrer aussi que, lors de l’exploration et de la découverte des grottes dans une obscurité quasi totale, les échos et la technique de l’écholocalisation (echolocation en anglais) étaient utilisés ; les points rouges sont souvent des repères correspondant à des maxima de résonance. On retrouve la même concordance dans les sites de peintures sur rochers en plein air. On peut donc dire que les peintures sont fréquemment des signes visibles de sons invisibles. Nous présentons ici succinctement d’une part les résultats obtenus dans les grottes du Portel, de Niaux, d’Isturitz, Oxocelhaya, d’Arcy-sur-Cure et dans la grotte Kapova (Oural), et d’autre part quelques résultats concernant les rochers à peintures en plein air en Finlande, en Provence, en Espagne et au Mexique (Reznikoff, 2002 ; Rainio et al., 2014 ; Díaz-Andreu et al., 2017 ; Rainio, 2018). Dans ces grottes parmi d’autres, s’il n’y a pas de signes musicaux, il y a des signes picturaux qui en sont révélateurs. La question paraît plus complexe en ce qui concerne les gravures ; nous avançons l’hypothèse que ce sont surtout les peintures qui sollicitent le son. À part ce dernier point concernant les gravures, cet article ne présente pas de résultats importants nouveaux. Nous avons surtout cherché ici à répondre à l’objet et à l’interpellation du colloque au sujet des lacunes, absences et vides archéologiques, mais vides en apparence seulement pour ce qui est de la dimension sonore des grottes et des rochers peints de la Préhistoire.
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hal-04649795 , version 1 (16-07-2024)

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Iégor Reznikoff. Le son ne laisse pas de trace, et pourtant !. Hiatus, lacunes et absences : identifier et interpréter les vides archéologiques, Actes du 29e Congrès préhistorique de France, 31 mai-4 juin 2021, Toulouse, Session Manifestations artistiques et symboliques, Société préhistorique française, pp.51-60, 2024. ⟨hal-04649795⟩
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