Stone Age Sound Tracks: The Acoustic Archaeology of Ancient Sites. Paul Devereux, Vega, London, 2001. Paperback, 160 pages, £12.00. ISBN 1-84333-019-9. Available from www.pauldevereux.co.uk

Researchers have long been intrigued by the acoustic properties of many ancient sites but until recently there was little official recognition of the importance of the results they found. This has now changed: in 2003 archaeology officially recognised the subdiscipline of archaeoacoustics and with this official sanction, work is able to proceed in a methodical and coordinated manner. Paul Devereux has long been involved in this field and his book, Stone Age Soundtracks, remains the only book dedicated to this research.
    This book is a comprehensive introduction to the field which is based upon the growing realisation that ancient cultic practices - essentially shamanic - used sound as an integral part of their ritual techniques. We have long had an intellectual appreciation of this through such as the strange ‘words of power’ mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts and the well-known fact that the Hebrew name of God was never pronounced, showing an appreciation of the power of the sound.
    As the book details, early experiments at Hopi Indian sites in Arizona showed the validity of the study and, beginning in 1994, the systematic investigation of the acoustics of a number of megalithic chambered mounds in the British Isles began. It was found that these tombs all resonated to frequency ranges clustered around 110-112 Hz: within the range of adult male vocal abilities.
    Oddities were discovered: in one site in the Orkney Islands - Dwarfie Stane - which is a large solid stone with a long passage and two chambers hewn out of it, researchers found that it was easy to set up a resonant frequency with human voices and the resulting sound vibration caused the great stone block itself to vibrate.
    Stone circles seemed to operate like ancient theatres - sound generated at certain points became amplified. Some of the upright stones at Stonehenge are slightly concave and this may have been used to focus the sound to certain places. In the painted Palaeolithic caves sound and design seemed to be linked: in the cave at Niaux, for example, ninety percent of the cave paintings were found in the key resonant locations.
    This is an intriguing and enjoyable book opening up and explaining very simply this new archaeological area for the interested reader. We can expect many more discoveries to be made; I hope that Paul Devereux will continue to write about them.
    Michael Baigent