Methods for psychoacoustic and emotional evaluation of archaeological soundscapes with auralisation

Abstract

In this chapter, the most cutting-edge approaches in psychoacoustics used in archaeology are critically examined, with an emphasis on the study of rock art locations. The capturing of reverberation with a measured impulse response is presented as a crucial methodology for recording the acoustic properties of rock art sites, extracting numerical parameters and conducting statistical analyses, and performing auralisations. In archaeology, auralisation has numerous uses, including the study of psychoacoustics and the preservation of acoustic heritage. Regarding psychoacoustics, several behavioural scales used in the research about the perception and emotional responses to soundscapes are discussed, along with the studies that implement them. The need for the creation of new instruments specific for the recently born field of psychoarchaeoacoustics is debated, as well as the best strategies to overcome cultural biases that studying the sound of the past in the present inevitably entails.