mgr Katarzyna Tatoń

  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0491-0362


The topic of my dissertation is: „Prehistoric and medieval ceramic rattles as sounding tools from present-day Polish territory”.


My research focuses on the sound of prehistoric and early medieval idiophones, particularly ceramic rattles. Among the archaeological objects from todays Poland, they constitute a large group of over a thousand. They appeared here in the Neolithic and were present with interruptions until the Middle Ages. They were most numerous in the Bronze Age, associated with the Lusatian cultures, and in the early Middle Ages. According to the Hornbostl-Sachs classification of musical instruments, they all belong to the group of vessel rattles in which the rattling elements are enclosed inside a ceramic vessel.

The musicological study of ceramic rattles being carried out today involves documenting the sound material, followed by a detailed acoustic analysis. This allows for the detection of momentary features of the sound, often impossible to capture in an auditory assessment. The hitherto unknown features of rattles are therefore revealed. The individual nature of the sounds of specific objects was confirmed. Their spectra, which are characteristic of multifarious sounds, differ in terms of the frequency range excited, the formant area, the number of essential components, and their distribution in the spectrum. The mere presence of distinct, amplified components, with well-marked rise and echoing phases, may be surprising, especially in the light of earlier results from studies of ceramic idiophones found in Poland.

Acoustic analysis not only reveals a series of amplified sound components, noise ranges or formant areas. Certain similarities can be detected in the sounds of rattles of different provenance and belonging to different periods in history. This reveals distinctive ‘types’ of sounds that do not necessarily coincide with the rattle categories resulting from archaeological systematics. This phenomenon may be closely related to the internal shape of the rattle chamber, which is not always in keeping with its external form. Confirmation of this hypothesis as well as identification of hitherto undescribed phenomena occurring in the sound spectra of ceramic rattles from Polish territories and their chronological and cultural relationships is the main aim of the dissertation.


Publication:

  1. Tatoń K., Gliniane grzechotki archeologiczne jako źródło wiedzy na temat dźwięków przeszłości [w:] K. Chrzan, P. Rzeźnik, S. Siemianowska (red.) Ceramika i szkło jako źródło do badań nad przeszłością, Wydawca: Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Wrocław 2023, s. 193-203.
  2. Tatoń K., Grzechotki archeologiczne porządkowane dźwiękiem [w:] A. Gruszczyńska-Ziółkowska (red.), Wydobyte z ciszy, Warszawa 2021, s. 65-96.
  3. Gruszczyńska-Ziółkowska A., Tatoń K., Tajemnice dźwięku „pisanki” [w:] A. Gruszczyńska-Ziółkowska (red.), Wydobyte z ciszy, Warszawa 2021, s. 97-130.