The earliest voices from the East: phono‐archaeological explorations and tomorrow's museums

Abstract

In Museum, No. 145 (Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, 1985, pp. 2–12), the Harvard Semitic Museum (HSM) focused attention on ‘photo‐archaeology and tomorrow's museums,’ particularly in regard to the virtually untapped cultural and scientific usefulness of photo‐documentation as well as to the dangerously vulnerable delicacy of these ‘messages‐in‐light’, which will vanish for ever if not properly preserved.In this article, the author describes how, through the King Fahd Archives (KFA), ‘phono‐archaeological’ preservation efforts have now begun to link scholars, technicians and artists around the world, in an effort to find, preserve, share and appreciate freshly recovered sounds from long ago.