Stanford University achaeologists and acousticians are studying the three-millennia old pre-Incan temples underground in Peru's Chavín de Huántar to understand the use of low-tech sound and light, in combination with hallucinogens, to create mystical experiences. Now, Stanford has documented more of that story, focusing on how acousticians are attempting to recreate and listen to sounds that worshippers heard 3,000 years ago.
From Stanford News:
"We have evidence of the manipulation of light; we have acoustic spaces where it seems that they were playing around with sound. We've got evidence of the use of psycho-active drugs," said (anthropologist John) Rick. But what other effects were they using in this very early multimedia show, and why? Was it a kind of mind control using sensory manipulation exercised by the priestly elite?... Since the archaeo-acoustic team's visit to Peru in 2008, CCRMA graduate student and Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship recipient Miriam Kolar, whose dissertation studies the psychoacoustics of Chavín, has been making on-site measurements in the temple complex. She is hoping to recreate "the aural experience of an ancient ceremonial center."
Using sprays of flexible microphones, amplifiers, low distortion speakers, analog-to-digital converters and computer audio interfaces, she measures "how the architecture of these spaces affects auditory perception, which can provide clues about the site's purpose." In her experiments, "participants listen, in the real acoustic context, to sounds that could have been authentic in Chavín times," and then respond to questions about what they hear.
Supplying the support research back at Stanford, Abel explores the "auditory texture of the place" and tries to "quantify the gallery acoustics." He and the rest of the team are in a race against time: Chavín needs conservation work that will forever alter the mysterious acoustics in the sharply twisting passages and underground alcoves.
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