Tracing Ancient Music in the Andes: Integrative Archaeoacoustics at Chavin de Huantar, Peru

Music Department lecture by Miriam Kolar, Ph.D.
Candidate for Assistant Professor in Music

Miriam Kolar’s integrative archaeoacoustics research at the Andean Formative ceremonial center at Chaviin de Huaantar, Peruu interrelates acoustical, psychoacoustical, and ethnomusicological methodologies to reveal experientially salient evidence of ancient musical instruments, practices and settings. In-situ instrumental tests, acoustical measurements, auditory perceptual experiments, and auralizations - along with field interviews of musician and non-musician research participants - provide embodied understandings of prehistoric musical evidence. This anthropological, transdisciplinary approach to prehistoric ethnomusicology unites the materiality and reception of sound with its abstract and cultural descriptions.
Dr. Kolar is currently a Weatherhead Fellow at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, working on her book about the study of sound in archaeology that explores issues of virtuality and representation, and how performance of sensory media interconnects humans across time and geography. Previously the Five College Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities, she taught sound studies and music archaeology courses at Amherst and Hampshire Colleges, and advised Honors Theses and Division Projects. Free