SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 15. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands has completed the inventory of lithophones from El Hierro with the finding of a new typology within these archaeological sites in the Canary Islands: the rocking lithophone. In addition to this singularity, the final result of the study in El Hierro consists, in a first approximation, of six records distributed mainly in the northern part of the island.
Lithophones are groups of natural rocks, generally phonolites and basalts, which, when struck at specific points, produce sounds of different tones for various recreational or ritual purposes, or as a warning or communication instrument. These elements were used from aboriginal times to more recent times in the Canary Islands, but their archaeological study is scarce.
Through the work promoted by the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage in Tenerife, La Gomera and El Hierro, three types of lithophones have been documented: percussion, aerophones and rocking. The latter has only been found on the island of El Hierro and, as its name suggests, the sound is produced by rocking.
The oral sources highlight the touch by rocking “swinging” on the stone, that is, this typology consists of making an upper rock collide against another, on which a force is exerted with the feet resting on its ends, so that it tilts alternately percussing at two different points on the base stone.
Now, of the six lithophones registered in the catalog of this island, one is simple percussion, three are multiple percussion and two are rocking. Of the two balancing “we have only been able to document one because the one in the El Golfo area, which had the place name of Matraca, disappeared according to oral sources,” says Iván González, director of Immersive Disclosure. “The one that exists today is a mixed hit, that is, it works by percussion and swinging, and it is located in an area that is difficult to access,” says González.
CANARY ISLANDS LITHOPHONE MAP
A preferred theme for this area of the Government of the Canary Islands is research on lithophones “because we hardly know about the use of these goods and because it is an archaeological site that can be studied on the ground but is also related to the entire sound heritage of Canary Islands since aboriginal times”, declares Nona Perera, general director of Cultural Heritage.
With the realization of these inventories, “we have a repertoire of the places that are used to make the stones sound”, defends the general director. In addition, in this way the knowledge about these archaeological sites that have hardly been studied by specialists is recovered.
The multidisciplinary team is made up of Iván González, archaeologist and project coordinator, Carlos Gustavo González, researcher, and Tomás Medina, georeferencing expert.
This work is the result of an exhaustive observation of the territory to locate this type of deposits. In this sense, the researchers take into account parameters such as toponymy and oral tradition, which in this case become primary sources, as well as nearby archaeological records and physical marks of use on the stones.
The purpose of these works is to try to establish a starting point on the presence of lithophones in the Canary Islands, identifying and characterizing the places that respond to these characteristics in order to, from there, facilitate lines of research that help to delve into this field of study. of archeology and make it possible to establish comparisons between islands.
“Very similar patterns are met on each island, but each one has its exceptions,” specifies Iván. With these new data, it is still too early to establish a comparison between territories, but it is clear that “when we have all the islands we will be able to talk about certain behaviors and customs that we did not know about the aboriginal population”, within different communicative or ritual contexts, according to the main hypotheses.
The Government of the Canary Islands intends to complete the map of lithophones in the archipelago with new inventories in the rest of the islands in order to establish guidelines that explain the operation and usefulness of these sound elements over the centuries.
