MUSICAL IDENTITIES, KNOWLEDGE, AND EXCHANGE IN THE ARCHAIC GREEK MEDITERRANEAN (700-480 BCE)

This project is the first extended analysis of musical regionalism and exchange in the Archaic Greek Mediterranean (700-480 BCE).

It employs interdisciplinary methodologies and evidence (literary analysis, epigraphy, iconography, archaeology, organology, and music cognition ).

This project is possible because I approach a key body of evidence, Archaic Greek figural pottery, with new methodologies.

Critiqued through the lens of new materialism and object centred analyses, this pottery depicts a wealth of music iconography across a range of regional compositions and styles.

Further, with appropriate methodological considerations, the trade distribution of this pottery can be used as a proxy for routes of musical exchange. Music was one of many invisible commodities in ancient Greece.

This evidence will be enhanced by an in-depth analysis of surviving musical instruments, using methodologies such as adapted object biographies to look at instruments as evidence for the social lives of those who made, played, and listened to them, and the ways that individual instruments held different meanings in different regions.

In this way, I build on and move away from the ‘archaeology of contexts’ developed by recent music archaeology, and develop a system for focusing on the materialism of musical objects.

These corpora are supplemented by epigraphic and literary evidence to reconstruct the extent to which the musical regionalisms recorded by poets resemble those suggested by the material evidence, or if they function more as literary devices. This body of evidence will be used for an open visual database of material relating to ancient Greek music.Dr.

Hagel’s expertise in ancient music theory and instruments and his work in creating digital tools to assist with the study of ancient music, is of vital importance for this project.

In turn, I would bring expertise in Archaic Greek society, art and material culture and new methodological perspectives.