The rattle from Szadek

Acoustic research with the use of numerical sound reconstruction

Abstract

Ceramic sound tools using clay as a raw material have been produced since the very beginning of human history. This was also the case for the cultures that inhabited the area comprised by pre­sent-day Poland. So far, over 1,200 ceramic rattles or their fragments have been discovered in this area. They are the subject of interdisciplinary research, using various methods from archaeology, musicology, acoustics, and even mechanical engineering. The state of preservation of the artefacts is often unsatisfactory, and thus important information about their original behavior has been lost. Traditional reconstructions of ceramic rattles restored their appearance only, without recon­structing the basic function of sound production. In order for the sound to be reliably recon­structed, the shape of the rattle, the material from which it was originally made, as well as the entire technological process must be precisely recreated. This is an extremely difficult task, espe­cially in the case of poorly preserved objects. In these cases, reverse engineering methods using numerical modeling are often of use, because they allow the determination of the frequency struc­ture of the rattle sound spectrum. Using reverse engineering techniques, it is possible to build a model that will allow us to recreate at least some of the sound characteristics of the reconstructed ceramic rattles.