Aurignacian Flutes
By Frances Gill
Stephanie Kolb and Frances Gill with GK1 and HF1. Photo by Maria Malina 2011.
Aurignacian flutes is the term I give the archaeological material which I am researching at Tübingen University. Nicholas Conard gave me the chance to research this material in 2010 and since then I have been required to read archaeology having had already read music and worked as a musician and flute teacher in the north of England for several years. I have also since read musicology and am in third gear, so to speak, with this Ph.D. research.
As a consequence of this I have been introduced to the subject of music archaeology and the work of Cajsa Lund. Cajsa is one of the first to have laid solid foundations for research in this area which brings together musicologists, musicians and archaeologists. In the music-archaeology literature, Aurignacian flutes have been classified as ‘aerophones’ and ‘wind instruments’. Made from bird-bone and mammoth-ivory these artefacts are called ‘pipes’ as well as ‘flutes’. They are from the period in archaeological history known as the Upper Palaeolithic (Early Stone Age). They have also been described as ‘Ice Age’ flutes.