Air and sound: Indigenous wind instruments made of bone in the Southeast United States

Abstract

ABSTRACT By studying the distribution of wind instruments made of bone, we investigate the presence of musical traditions in the American Southeast and nearby regions during the last few centuries prior to European arrival. Our findings show that southeastern Indigenous peoples used bone instruments far less than their neighbors, suggesting that they almost exclusively made whistles and flutes from reeds, wood, and other materials that do not survive in the archaeological record. This variation in materials was not based on a lack of knowledge, as we detail the presence of several bone wind instruments in the Southeast, but rather, we suggest, a unique musical tradition in the region.