ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE EAR (Season 2)
A series of radio programmes and short films exploring prehistoric objects at Corinium Museum.
Music, sound design, narratives, and videography by Chris Cundy
Poetry by Adam Horovitz
In partnership with Corinium Museum and Resonance 104.4FM
supported by Help Musicians and Arts Council England
Long-listed in the best creative content category at the 2023 Digital Culture Awards
A series of radio programmes and short films exploring prehistoric objects at Corinium Museum.
Music, sound design, narratives, and videography by Chris Cundy
Poetry by Adam Horovitz
In partnership with Corinium Museum and Resonance 104.4FM
supported by Help Musicians and Arts Council England
Long-listed in the best creative content category at the 2023 Digital Culture Awards
| episode 1 (season 2) A LAND BETWEEN TWO RIVERS
In this episode we talk to Corinium Museum director Katharine Walker about a Lower Paleolithic handaxe, and archaeologist Timothy Darvill shows us a Neolithic arc pendant. Botonist Mike Ward ventures back into the landscape where these objects were found, and we meet up with Boss Morris, an all female traditional Morris dancing side to talk about what this landscape means to them.
In this episode we talk to Corinium Museum director Katharine Walker about a Lower Paleolithic handaxe, and archaeologist Timothy Darvill shows us a Neolithic arc pendant. Botonist Mike Ward ventures back into the landscape where these objects were found, and we meet up with Boss Morris, an all female traditional Morris dancing side to talk about what this landscape means to them.
| episode 2 (season 2) THE EARLIEST KNOWN FAMILY TREE IN THE WORLD
In this episode we talk to archaeologist Timothy Darvill about the fascinating finds and grave goods on display at Corinium Museum from Hazleton North, an early Neolithic tomb in the Central Cotswolds. I take a hike up there with Brendan Barrymore Bayliss who remembers being on the original dig team when he was just fifteen. And archaeologist Chris Fowler talks about a recent DNA study that has revealed the earliest known family tree in the world.
In this episode we talk to archaeologist Timothy Darvill about the fascinating finds and grave goods on display at Corinium Museum from Hazleton North, an early Neolithic tomb in the Central Cotswolds. I take a hike up there with Brendan Barrymore Bayliss who remembers being on the original dig team when he was just fifteen. And archaeologist Chris Fowler talks about a recent DNA study that has revealed the earliest known family tree in the world.
| episode 3 (season 2) BENEATH THE BARROW
In this episode museum director Katharine Walker shows us a selection of tiny harpoons and blade-lets made by Mesolithic hunter gatherers. Archaeologist Timothy Darvill tells us about a house that was discovered beneath the Neolithic long barrow at Hazleton North. And we visit Matt Grimmitt at Winchcombe Pottery to talk about a six thousand year old soup bowl.
In this episode museum director Katharine Walker shows us a selection of tiny harpoons and blade-lets made by Mesolithic hunter gatherers. Archaeologist Timothy Darvill tells us about a house that was discovered beneath the Neolithic long barrow at Hazleton North. And we visit Matt Grimmitt at Winchcombe Pottery to talk about a six thousand year old soup bowl.
| episode 4 (season 2) AN EARLY HISTORY OF MONEY
In this episode we take a prehistoric leap forwards into the Iron Age. We visit an unassuming village called Bagendon where, two thousand years ago, the Dubonnian tribe discovered a flair for taming wild horses and where they minted Britain's first ever coinage. And Corinium Museum’s Emma Stuart talks to us about the early history of money.
In this episode we take a prehistoric leap forwards into the Iron Age. We visit an unassuming village called Bagendon where, two thousand years ago, the Dubonnian tribe discovered a flair for taming wild horses and where they minted Britain's first ever coinage. And Corinium Museum’s Emma Stuart talks to us about the early history of money.
| episode 5 (season 2) WOLF UNDER GLASS
In this episode we talk to Corinium Museum's James Harris about our enduring relationship with animals and we follow the footprints of an Iron Age hunting dog. All female Morris dancing side Boss Morris talk about wearing papier mache beast heads, and archaeologist Timothy Darvill contemplates a Neolithic animal totem at Hazleton North long barrow. We also hear from archaeologist Chris Fowler who talks about the symbology of animals in the ancient world.
In this episode we talk to Corinium Museum's James Harris about our enduring relationship with animals and we follow the footprints of an Iron Age hunting dog. All female Morris dancing side Boss Morris talk about wearing papier mache beast heads, and archaeologist Timothy Darvill contemplates a Neolithic animal totem at Hazleton North long barrow. We also hear from archaeologist Chris Fowler who talks about the symbology of animals in the ancient world.
A Flickering Line Between Two Points in the Landscape
Walking into the Museum, going past reception and through into the prehistory gallery the very first object you see is a large flint handaxe. Its surface is speckled in rusty oranges and deep greens absorbed from the pigments of ancient river sediments. It was found in 1973 somewhere near the River Churn at South Cerney where it winds its way through a matrix of reservoirs and quarry levels. Highly valued by its original owner, this handaxe is thought to have been lying here for at least 42’000 years and there’s some speculation it could have been made and used even longer ago than that. This is the earliest object in the collection and evidence that Neanderthal hunter gatherers knew the river confluences of mainland Europe and followed them through the Rhine Valley and the Thames all the way into Gloucestershire. Some of the earliest people to bring flint tools here lived around 200’000 years ago. These people would have followed woolly Rhinoceros and herds of Mammoth on their way here.
A Place in the River
The source of the River Churn emerges at a place called Seven Springs where it rises up from under the A436. A slither of yellow ochre spills out from just below the roadside while a constant stream of traffic thunders past above. It comes from deep reservoirs of yellow oolitic limestone, sediments of Jurassic rock packed with billions of fossilised sea urchins. Some people claim this is the true source of the River Thames suggesting it’s more than just a lazy tributary but a flickering line between two fixed points in the landscape. Is this the beginning of something or the end of a long migration? Rivers are elusive things but they follow gravitational pathways of least resistance. Throughout history rivers have been regarded as magical entities, fluid points between this place and the next, mirror images and reflections of past lives.
In this piece I wanted to listen back to the river, to see if I could hear it above all the traffic thundering past. I wanted to see if the river had a song and if I listened for long enough, I wondered if I might be able to hear a chorus of billions of ancient sea urchins singing from somewhere underneath the road.
I made the recordings on location, capturing the natural sounds around me meshed with the constant hum of the A436. I accompanied this with a small piece of unworked flint on a sound box played as simple percussion instruments. Back in the studio I added a small chorus of clay ocarinas, wind instruments, and layers of other sound sources.
In this piece I wanted to listen back to the river, to see if I could hear it above all the traffic thundering past. I wanted to see if the river had a song and if I listened for long enough, I wondered if I might be able to hear a chorus of billions of ancient sea urchins singing from somewhere underneath the road.
I made the recordings on location, capturing the natural sounds around me meshed with the constant hum of the A436. I accompanied this with a small piece of unworked flint on a sound box played as simple percussion instruments. Back in the studio I added a small chorus of clay ocarinas, wind instruments, and layers of other sound sources.
Earth-bound, Wind-bound at Hazleton North Long Barrow
A pair of long barrows once stood in this field. They were built 5’700 years ago by early farming communities and functioned as communal tombs. The Hazleton long barrows were covered by earth mounds and had intricate stone walls that curved round into hollowed alcoves known as forecourts. The monuments may well have been adorned with objects and offerings, perhaps even pig skulls. Inside, these monuments contained family chambers where the bones of the dead were brought and scattered. Animal bones, flint cores and ceramics were also found in the chambers along with a few other tantalising objects which provide clues about their occupants. Many of these items are on display in the Stone Age to Corinium gallery.
My first visit to Hazleton North took place in February 2022. There’s not much to see here now, just wide open farmland surrounded by tracks and quiet tree lines, but my senses have been heightened. I’m here at sunrise and I share the morning with wild hare, brambling, and red deer. I’m also in the company of my friend Brendan who took part in a major excavation here in 1979 when he was just fifteen, taken under the wing of a team of local archaeologists who were concerned the monument was slowly disappearing into the landscape as a result of industrial ploughing and natural corrosion.
The frosty soil reveals a scattering of loose stones but there’s no suggestion of where the mound is. Brendan knows this place instinctively and I amble with him across the field to whereabouts we think it must be. Suddenly I feel a shift in the contours around me and a frosty outline appears from out of the half light. A strange shape is cast across the old barrow ground. This must be the place.
In the soundscape I’ve recorded wind in the surrounding trees and birdsong in the field. I combined this with a slow moving low melody played on two bass clarinets. You can also hear us walking across the field, and there are other sounds here too; as we stood on the barrow ground we noticed a cluster of brown beech leaves circling in the wind around us. They have been slowed down in the recording to bring out an almost flint-like sonority. There’s also a constant murmur, a simple Helmholtz effect caused by the wind as it sang across the hollow of an open fence post in a field a few miles away. Adam’s poem is a reflection on this place and of the stories held within the landscape.
My first visit to Hazleton North took place in February 2022. There’s not much to see here now, just wide open farmland surrounded by tracks and quiet tree lines, but my senses have been heightened. I’m here at sunrise and I share the morning with wild hare, brambling, and red deer. I’m also in the company of my friend Brendan who took part in a major excavation here in 1979 when he was just fifteen, taken under the wing of a team of local archaeologists who were concerned the monument was slowly disappearing into the landscape as a result of industrial ploughing and natural corrosion.
The frosty soil reveals a scattering of loose stones but there’s no suggestion of where the mound is. Brendan knows this place instinctively and I amble with him across the field to whereabouts we think it must be. Suddenly I feel a shift in the contours around me and a frosty outline appears from out of the half light. A strange shape is cast across the old barrow ground. This must be the place.
In the soundscape I’ve recorded wind in the surrounding trees and birdsong in the field. I combined this with a slow moving low melody played on two bass clarinets. You can also hear us walking across the field, and there are other sounds here too; as we stood on the barrow ground we noticed a cluster of brown beech leaves circling in the wind around us. They have been slowed down in the recording to bring out an almost flint-like sonority. There’s also a constant murmur, a simple Helmholtz effect caused by the wind as it sang across the hollow of an open fence post in a field a few miles away. Adam’s poem is a reflection on this place and of the stories held within the landscape.
Unboxing the Dead
It’s said you can’t eavesdrop on history; you have to just be there. Well I’m at Corinium Museum’s storerooms in Northleach to eavesdrop on a guided tour and to follow a small group of visitors for a behind the scenes view of the Museum’s expansive collection. This is where you’ll find everything that’s not currently on display to the public. I’m also hoping to locate a few more of the finds from Hazleton North, the neolithic long barrow excavated just a few miles away from here on Barrow Ground field during the 1980’s.
The store rooms reveal a labyrinth of brightly lit corridors and shelving units stacked to the ceiling with cardboard boxes, all labelled and carefully numbered. It’s a library of objects drawn from the landscape, a taxonomy of place names and dates from Victorian country houses to motorway construction sites and second world war airfields.
I follow a group of visitors through rooms filled with silent threshing machines and industrial sawmills, fragments of industry and village life. We see parts of a Roman mosaic, cornice stones belonging to long forgotten buildings, all curiously compiled and kept under the immaculate light of the storeroom. Upstairs in a corner is an unassuming set of shelving units where the neolithic things are kept.
After our tour party has departed we stay behind to meet up with collections assistant Caroline Morris and Museum director Katharine Walker. We’re here to see the bones of a whole community of people who lived nearly six thousand years ago. Forty or so individuals were excavated at the site of Hazleton North long barrow and their remains are kept in cellophane bags inside cardboard boxes, along with their animals, their tools and even the plant life, the grains and seeds they were cultivating for food. Fragments of the tomb itself can be found here too.
Caroline carefully removes the lid of a box marked ‘Individual A’. There’s a man’s body inside, his whole life and a world I can hardly imagine.
The music I have created for this repeats a slow refrain, everything comes and goes in waves. I’ve combined the lowest tones using a large ceramic vessel, the air of a clay flute mouthpiece, and the oscillation of two electronic transistors. The music is about the gesture of breathing, the expression of the body, and the slow melody that follows.
The store rooms reveal a labyrinth of brightly lit corridors and shelving units stacked to the ceiling with cardboard boxes, all labelled and carefully numbered. It’s a library of objects drawn from the landscape, a taxonomy of place names and dates from Victorian country houses to motorway construction sites and second world war airfields.
I follow a group of visitors through rooms filled with silent threshing machines and industrial sawmills, fragments of industry and village life. We see parts of a Roman mosaic, cornice stones belonging to long forgotten buildings, all curiously compiled and kept under the immaculate light of the storeroom. Upstairs in a corner is an unassuming set of shelving units where the neolithic things are kept.
After our tour party has departed we stay behind to meet up with collections assistant Caroline Morris and Museum director Katharine Walker. We’re here to see the bones of a whole community of people who lived nearly six thousand years ago. Forty or so individuals were excavated at the site of Hazleton North long barrow and their remains are kept in cellophane bags inside cardboard boxes, along with their animals, their tools and even the plant life, the grains and seeds they were cultivating for food. Fragments of the tomb itself can be found here too.
Caroline carefully removes the lid of a box marked ‘Individual A’. There’s a man’s body inside, his whole life and a world I can hardly imagine.
The music I have created for this repeats a slow refrain, everything comes and goes in waves. I’ve combined the lowest tones using a large ceramic vessel, the air of a clay flute mouthpiece, and the oscillation of two electronic transistors. The music is about the gesture of breathing, the expression of the body, and the slow melody that follows.
The Shape of Your Hands
Clay and pottery artefacts permeate the Stone Age to Corinium gallery. We see a myriad of fragments, broken sherds and outlines recurring throughout the Museum’s prehistory collection. Carinated edges from the early Neolithic give us tantalising clues about the objects they formed and the houses they once belonged to. We see pieces of cooking pots and other domestic ware made by people who were changing the landscape and who had cultivated an enormous knowledge about their local fauna and flora.
Adam’s poem is a meditation on the timeless craft of ceramics. I have created music for the
accompanying film using five clay ocarinas or vessel flutes, all of different shapes and sizes, ranging from bass up to sopranino.
I’ve collected these little clay instruments over many years and I love them. Each one is shaped with a pip-like mouthpiece just like a baroque recorder only smaller and they have six or seven finger holes. They’re often totemic in appearance and some of them are made to look like birds. I have one that’s in the shape of a poisonous rainforest frog. The sound of the ocarina is completely elemental and you can hold the instruments easily in the palm of your hand.
The music also features field recordings made at Winchcombe, a working studio Pottery right on the edge of the Cotswolds surrounded by woodland and ancient apple orchards. You’ll hear the sound of electric pottery wheels whirring away in the throwing rooms and the shaping of bowls as they are tapped steadily for their exact thickness and width.
Adam’s poem is a meditation on the timeless craft of ceramics. I have created music for the
accompanying film using five clay ocarinas or vessel flutes, all of different shapes and sizes, ranging from bass up to sopranino.
I’ve collected these little clay instruments over many years and I love them. Each one is shaped with a pip-like mouthpiece just like a baroque recorder only smaller and they have six or seven finger holes. They’re often totemic in appearance and some of them are made to look like birds. I have one that’s in the shape of a poisonous rainforest frog. The sound of the ocarina is completely elemental and you can hold the instruments easily in the palm of your hand.
The music also features field recordings made at Winchcombe, a working studio Pottery right on the edge of the Cotswolds surrounded by woodland and ancient apple orchards. You’ll hear the sound of electric pottery wheels whirring away in the throwing rooms and the shaping of bowls as they are tapped steadily for their exact thickness and width.
Slow Migration
Music for this piece comprises two elements; firstly environmental field recordings made spontaneously in the landscape, and secondly a piece of electronic music that was allowed to develop slowly in the studio.
Field recordings took place between Crippets Long Barrow and Crickley Hill in a woodland area at the far western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills. The recordings were made using an ambisonic microphone, a sort of surround sound system, while I walked in concentric circles tapping rhythms with two pieces of flint. I then slowed the recordings down by almost 60% to bring out the very fine textures and ambient detail of my improvised flint dance. You can hear the woodland floor and the sound of birdsong in these recordings too.
The electronic piece was developed with a more controlled linear process using analogue synthesisers, a soprano saxophone, and sustained multiphonic noises almost like whispering voices but played on two clarinets electronically processed.
The inspiration behind this was drawn from thinking about the vast movement of people who passed between wildly different landscapes during the prehistoric. There are no natural flint deposits in the Cotswolds and ancient people would have imported huge quantities of this material from far reaching places for producing tools and other essential items. Exotic stones from Cumbria and the Atlantic coastal regions have also been found in the Neolithic tombs and the settlement enclosures of the Cotswolds too.
The short film shows illustrations taken from a map of Britain’s geology, famously published by William Smith in 1815 and kept at the Natural History Museum in London. These have been superimposed alongside a close up image of a mobile polissoir stone on display at the Stone Age to Corinium gallery. This is a remarkable and rare item found during recent excavations at Bourton-on-the-Water business park. A smooth indent can be seen in the stone where it has been used to shape, smooth and polish countless tools and axe heads in ancient times. The stone itself is considered to be a very fine example of a glacial drift, a smooth deposit resulting from the last ice age when moving glaciers carried and rolled stones and minerals from one landscape into another landscape.
© 2022 Adam Horovitz & Chris Cundy
Field recordings took place between Crippets Long Barrow and Crickley Hill in a woodland area at the far western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills. The recordings were made using an ambisonic microphone, a sort of surround sound system, while I walked in concentric circles tapping rhythms with two pieces of flint. I then slowed the recordings down by almost 60% to bring out the very fine textures and ambient detail of my improvised flint dance. You can hear the woodland floor and the sound of birdsong in these recordings too.
The electronic piece was developed with a more controlled linear process using analogue synthesisers, a soprano saxophone, and sustained multiphonic noises almost like whispering voices but played on two clarinets electronically processed.
The inspiration behind this was drawn from thinking about the vast movement of people who passed between wildly different landscapes during the prehistoric. There are no natural flint deposits in the Cotswolds and ancient people would have imported huge quantities of this material from far reaching places for producing tools and other essential items. Exotic stones from Cumbria and the Atlantic coastal regions have also been found in the Neolithic tombs and the settlement enclosures of the Cotswolds too.
The short film shows illustrations taken from a map of Britain’s geology, famously published by William Smith in 1815 and kept at the Natural History Museum in London. These have been superimposed alongside a close up image of a mobile polissoir stone on display at the Stone Age to Corinium gallery. This is a remarkable and rare item found during recent excavations at Bourton-on-the-Water business park. A smooth indent can be seen in the stone where it has been used to shape, smooth and polish countless tools and axe heads in ancient times. The stone itself is considered to be a very fine example of a glacial drift, a smooth deposit resulting from the last ice age when moving glaciers carried and rolled stones and minerals from one landscape into another landscape.
© 2022 Adam Horovitz & Chris Cundy