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Music Archaeology, Signaling Theory, Social Differentiation

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Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 433))

Abstract

Musical flutes (pipes) constructed from bird bone and mammoth ivory begin to appear in the archaeological record from around 40,000 years ago. Due to the different physical demands of acquiring and working with these source materials in order to produce a flute, researchers have speculated about the significance—aesthetic or otherwise—of the use of mammoth ivory as a raw material for flutes. I argue that biological signaling theory provides a theoretical basis for the proposition that mammoth ivory flute production is a signal of increasing social differentiation in Upper Palaeolithic human life.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter expands and develops an idea I suggested in Killin (2018). The basic idea follows Kim Sterelny’s argument that symbolic culture signals not an upgrade in individual cognitive sophistication or the first appearance of self-identifying collectives, but is both partial cause and effect of increasing social hierarchy and wealth differential (Sterelny 2012, pp. 52–54).

  2. 2.

    For example, see (hear) experimental archaeologist and flautist Fredrich Seeberger’s CD Klangwelten der Altsteinzeit (“Soundworld of the Old Stone Age”), for Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren. Seeberger recorded experimental/explorative performances of replicas of Upper Palaeolithic flutes in Hohle Fels cave, demonstrating a range of possibilities of these flutes in one of their presumed acoustic spaces.

  3. 3.

    For discussion within this framework of this and other relevant examples, see Pain (2019).

  4. 4.

    For philosophical treatments of signaling theory, see work by Brian Skyrms (e.g., Skyrms 2004, 2010) and Peter Godfrey-Smith (e.g., Godfrey-Smith 2014a, b).

  5. 5.

    Actual cases of complete common interest are of course rare. However, cases of partial common interest can be more or less aligned, and this graded conception is all we need.

  6. 6.

    Not all high-cost signals are hard-to-fake and vice versa; for reasons of exposition I do not explicitly distinguish these here as that is a task not without difficulties and is orthogonal to my aims. See Brusse (2019) for philosophical analysis.

  7. 7.

    Tattooing is an ancient practice at least several thousand years old, but there is no evidence of it in Palaeolithic humans, and in any case, “tattooing does not consume much pigment, so most of what we find was probably used for other purposes” (Kuhn 2014, p. 44).

  8. 8.

    The material record provides ample evidence of the big game hunting skills of Late Pleistocene humans. Even if the ivory was acquired through scavenging practices rather than active hunting it would still have to be extracted from the carcass, which is not effortless, and may well have involved deterring other predators or scavengers.

  9. 9.

    They may also have been a direct causal mechanism of that shift, though I have not made the case for that herein.

  10. 10.

    Moreover, it was only due to painstakingly intricate efforts at waterscreening, organizing, and refitting that many of the bone and ivory Upper Palaeolithic flutes have been reconstructed and identified. Other excavations may have recovered fragments that remain unidentified.

  11. 11.

    I write in the present tense even though some traditions may no longer be practiced as they used to be prior to Western influence and other modern-day factors.

  12. 12.

    Hunting bow technologies appear in the archaeological record from 64 kya (Lombard and Haidle 2011; Lombard and Phillipson 2010).

  13. 13.

    Contrary to Adler’s evocative article title, “The earliest musical tradition”, about the bird-bone flute discussed earlier.

  14. 14.

    Some theorists have interpreted particular overwrought, finely crafted Middle Palaeolithic stone handaxes as sexual signals—the ‘sexy handaxe’ hypothesis (see, e.g., Kohn and Mithen 1999)—though this is controversial (e.g., Nowell and Chang 2009). A possible interpretation of the mammoth-ivory flutes, similarly, sees these as ‘sexy flutes’. That possibility is compatible with the view argued here (that they reflect increasing social complexity and differentiation) and thus may be a part of the story. Ancient humans were presumably constantly scrutinizing one another for partnership making/unmaking; being a skilled craftsperson presumably would not go unnoticed by potential partners. That said, the view here does not explain them as products of sexual selection.

  15. 15.

    I’m grateful to Myriam Albor for helpful discussion about this point.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada

    Anton Killin

  2. School of Philosophy and Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia

    Anton Killin

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Correspondence to Anton Killin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Mount Allison University, Sackville NB, Canada, School of Philosophy and Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australian National University, Acton ACT, Australia, Acton, ACT, Australia

    Anton Killin

  2. Department of Philosophy, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Sean Allen-Hermanson

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Killin, A. (2021). Music Archaeology, Signaling Theory, Social Differentiation. In: Killin, A., Allen-Hermanson, S. (eds) Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy. Synthese Library, vol 433. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61052-4_6

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