On the Sound Related to Painted Caves and Rocks

Author

Iégor Reznikoff

Files

Publication Date

April 2012

Abstract

Caves have natural properties of resonance: some areas sound very good acoustically, the sound lasts for several seconds or produces multiple echoes, whereas other areas have a dull resonance or no resonance at all. In a painted cave, it is extremely interesting to compare the map of the most resonant locations with the map of the locations of the paintings: are there correlations between resonance and paintings? Many Palaeolithic caves in France and in the Ural mountains have been studied, and for most of them the answer was remarkably positive: in short, the more resonant the location, the more paintings or signs are situated in this location. With regard to open spaces, we have studied the problem of the relationship between pictures and echoes at prehistoric painted rocks in Finland, France, and Norway, and we have obtained positive results, particularly in France. Successful research result have been achieved recently in Spain (Diaz-Andreu & Garcia 2012) and in Finland (Rainio et al. 2014), while some field experiments have been carried out in the US (Waller 2006).

Keywords

Rock-Art, Painted Caves, Sound, Echo, Echolocation, Shamanic Ritual, Kapova Cave, Solsemhula

Document Type

Article

Identifier

K26-00053

Recommended Citation

Reznikoff, Iégor, "On the Sound Related to Painted Caves and Rocks" (2012). KIP Articles. 3626.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/kip_articles/3626