Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher
Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher
As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.
The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.
In an article co-authored with his colleague Margarita Díaz-Andreu, the University of Barcelona researcher argues that 12 large shell trumpets found in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia – and dated to between the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC – may have been used as long-distance communication devices and as rudimentary musical instruments.
The fact that the shells appeared to have been collected after the Charonia lampas sea snails within them had died suggests they had been gathered for non-culinary purposes, just as the removal of the pointed tip of the shells indicates they were used as trumpets.
To put their theories to the test, the pair obtained permission to conduct acoustic experiments on the eight shell trumpets, which are sufficiently intact to produce sound. In November 2024, López García coaxed a “really powerful, stable tone” from the shells.
“It’s quite amazing that you get that very recognisable tone from a simple instrument that is just a very slightly modified animal body,” he says.
