Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction

Bone pipes are the most numerous instrument surviving from Early Medieval England. These instruments are usually classified as ‘flutes’ despite many of the examples missing the defining categorisations. Two examples from the archaeological record of early Medieval England will be used as case studie...

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Main Author: Lucy-Anne Taylor
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: EXARC 2021-11-01
Series:EXARC Journal
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Online Access:https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10600
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author Lucy-Anne Taylor
author_facet Lucy-Anne Taylor
author_sort Lucy-Anne Taylor
collection DOAJ
description Bone pipes are the most numerous instrument surviving from Early Medieval England. These instruments are usually classified as ‘flutes’ despite many of the examples missing the defining categorisations. Two examples from the archaeological record of early Medieval England will be used as case studies: one instrument from North-West Essex and the other from York. Through recreating these instruments as both reed pipes and flutes, it will be demonstrated how they could have been sounded by either mechanism. Additional experimentation will demonstrate an understanding of what type of sounding mechanisms were more likely and features of the bone pipes, such as holes for hanging the instruments from. These experiments will also show the distances over which the sound of the different mechanisms may have travelled and the way the features of the bone impacted on the results.
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institution Kabale University
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language English
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series EXARC Journal
spelling doaj-art-aebe24f994ec4a0493d3eaf70eaa4cd62025-08-20T04:02:10ZengEXARCEXARC Journal2212-89562021-11-012021/4ark:/88735/10600Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through ReconstructionLucy-Anne TaylorBone pipes are the most numerous instrument surviving from Early Medieval England. These instruments are usually classified as ‘flutes’ despite many of the examples missing the defining categorisations. Two examples from the archaeological record of early Medieval England will be used as case studies: one instrument from North-West Essex and the other from York. Through recreating these instruments as both reed pipes and flutes, it will be demonstrated how they could have been sounded by either mechanism. Additional experimentation will demonstrate an understanding of what type of sounding mechanisms were more likely and features of the bone pipes, such as holes for hanging the instruments from. These experiments will also show the distances over which the sound of the different mechanisms may have travelled and the way the features of the bone impacted on the results.https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10600music and musical instruments(re)constructionearly middle agesunited kingdom
spellingShingle Lucy-Anne Taylor
Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
EXARC Journal
music and musical instruments
(re)construction
early middle ages
united kingdom
title Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
title_full Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
title_fullStr Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
title_full_unstemmed Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
title_short Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction
title_sort early medieval bone pipes understanding the sounds of these instruments through reconstruction
topic music and musical instruments
(re)construction
early middle ages
united kingdom
url https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10600
work_keys_str_mv AT lucyannetaylor earlymedievalbonepipesunderstandingthesoundsoftheseinstrumentsthroughreconstruction