Page 80 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 12(2) (2024)

This soundscape analysis was based on the in at least two of the parish churches and sever-
acoustic measurements of a modern bell in San- al more parish districts that comprised the me-
ta Maria d’Àneu. We do not know about the bell dieval Àneu deanery. Due to its central location
used in the medieval period. However, we ex- in the valley, Santa Maria possessed the audito-
pect that the medieval bell’s acoustic character- ry capacity to initiate an aural network among
istics differed somewhat from those of the mod- all the surrounding parishes, allowing auditory
ern bell. messages to be promptly broadcasted through-
As shown in the testing of weather scenar- out the Àneu deanery. This supports the hypoth-
ios, wind strongly affects sound propagation in esis that Santa Maria d’Àneu was an ecclesiasti-
the landscape, drastically shrinking the area cov- cal center of the valley during medieval times,
ered by bell-ringing sounds. However, strong although it is insufficient to prove it definitively.
winds are rare in this area, and we should keep in The results of this study encourage further
80 mind that the weather scenarios tested in this re- investigation into the medieval aural network of
search (A.2., B, C) are extremes that occur once the Àneu deanery. A deeper understanding of
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 12 (2024), številka 2 / volume 12 (2024), number 2
every several years or even decades. what happens at the borders of the sound prop-
The results of the visibility analysis are per- agation maps is fundamental. High-resolution
fectly in line with those of the virtual sound DEM and NLCD data are necessary to achieve
propagation simulation. Once again, Santa Ma- more precise sound propagation models. Addi-
ria d’Àneu seems to be in a central position, with tionally, measuring the acoustic properties of
a good field of vision and a high visibility in- medieval bells still in use in the Catalan region
dex. Likewise, the three churches that can vir- and exploring the audibility of bell sounds con-
tually hear its bells (10, 12, and 14) can also see cerning background noise would significantly
it. The developed models allow us to go a step advance our understanding of the medieval au-
further and suggest that all these churches were ditory network of the Àneu deanery.
part of a much wider network of intervisibility,
something that we can only guess at for the au- Data Availability
ral dimension. The data supporting this study’s findings are available
To fully understand the aural network of at CORA—Repositori de Dades de Recerca: https://
the Àneu deanery during the Late Middle Ages, doi.org/10.34810/data1756.
it would be crucial to simulate the sound prop-
agation of bells from all 22 parish churches and Acknowledgments
verify these simulations with onsite testing. Ad- This research was conducted as part of the CULT-AU-
ditionally, this research should be expanded to RAL project, fully titled ‘Aural Culture: Decoding the
include the numerous suffragan churches that Sacred Soundscapes of Medieval Europe,’ which re-
existed alongside the parish churches in each dis- ceived funding from the European Union’s Horizon
trict, as they undoubtedly influenced the densi- Europe program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie
ty and stability of the Àneu deanery’s aural net- Grant Agreement No. 101064323. It was also supported
work. Expanding the study this way could reveal by the Advanced ERC Artsoundscapes project (Grant
auditory or visual connections between some of Agreement No. 787842). As the research results were
the isolated points on our maps and integrate presented at the EAA Rome 2024 annual meeting, we
the three subsystems we identified as independ- would also like to thank MAHPA (Research Group
ent within the intervisibility network. of Medieval Art, History, Paleography, and Archaeol-
ogy) for partially covering the travel expenses. The au-
Conclusion thors thank Diego Moreno Iglesias, an acoustic techni-
This archaeoacoustic study determined that the cian, for his invaluable assistance in conducting the field
bell sounds of Santa Maria d’Àneu are audible acoustic measurements.