A thesis on the use of sound in mediaeval Catalonia wins the Doctors’ Senate Award
This year, the University of Barcelona’s Doctors’ Senate Award went to Laura Castellet for her thesis El paisatge sonor de la Catalunya medieval (segles VI-XIV), un exercici de restitució emocional des de l’arqueologia del so, which analyses human sound activity in the early Middle Ages in Catalan territory. This study has included the restitution of instruments and sounds of the period, it deals with issues such as the function of church bells or, in the field of military communication, how sound passed from one castle to another through objects such as horns.
This year, the University of Barcelona’s Doctors’ Senate Award went to Laura Castellet for her thesis El paisatge sonor de la Catalunya medieval (segles VI-XIV), un exercici de restitució emocional des de l’arqueologia del so, which analyses human sound activity in the early Middle Ages in Catalan territory. This study has included the restitution of instruments and sounds of the period, it deals with issues such as the function of church bells or, in the field of military communication, how sound passed from one castle to another through objects such as horns.
This is an interdisciplinary study in which, after obtaining data from very diverse sources, an exercise in experimental archaeology has been carried out: the restitution of instruments and sound objects as well as techniques for the expression of sound and music.
In this way, it has been possible to understand basic elements of communication in mediaeval Catalonia: the function of church bells; military communication strategies, with analysis of how sound was passed from one place to another through objects such as horns in castles or towers, the symbolic concepts of the images, with recreations of, for example, the instruments that were used to announce the apocalypse, or the comprehension of literary texts based on their sound reality.
Castellet says she analysed sonority “from a mainly social point of view”. She also points out that, during the study, she tried to determine the names of sonorities and the instruments in Catalan: “I had a look at what Llull says and, in general, at Catalan texts”, she notes. She concludes that sonority “is a tool for understanding an archaeological site; the soundscape contributes to understanding the past”.
The thesis was supervised by Marta Sancho, professor at the UB’s Department of History and Archaeology.
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