Abstract
In Ecuador, bottles as containers for liquids appeared in the Late Formative period at the end of the Machalilla culture (1600 BC to 800 BC). Whistle bottles were created and perfected during the Chorrera culture (900 BC to 100 BC), and finally evolved into polyphonic bottles during the Bahía culture (500 BC to 650 AD). During the Chorrera phase, moulded aesthetic elements were developed and incorporated:, such as zoomorphs and anthropomorphs, phytomorphs, architectural forms, whose animated references were related to the acoustics they produced, giving 'onomatopoeic' sounds of nature (e.g. birds, monkeys, frogs). The current research focused on the structural and systematic study of a double ellipsoid ornithomorph bottle with a whistle from the Chorrera-Bahía culture (900 BC to 100 BC), an object that is currently in the National Archaeological Reserve of the Ministry of Culture in the city of Quito, Republic of Ecuador (Ch-B-1-38-69) (Figure 1). Two replicas and the original were investigated in situ by the Universidad Central del Ecuador and it was possible to determine that both blowing into and moving the objects when filled with water produced the sound. We interpret this as a need to 'automate' the sound production, and the acoustics derived from the movement of water is what possibly motivated Crespo (1966) to call them 'magical objects'.
Highlights
Humanity in the course of its cultural development has left some testimony of its acoustic skill, evidenced in the sound-producing objects found across diverse contexts throughout history
On the Pacific coast of the Republic of Ecuador, the creation and development of one such acoustic device is the whistle bottle, locally known as "botella silbato" (Crespo 1966; de Espinoza 2006; Estrada et al 1962; Ontaneda 2007) which has been attributed to the Chorrera culture (900 BC to 100 BC)
Compressed air is sent through a pipe over a pointed or corner-shaped object called a labium. This phenomenon was studied by Marc Pierre Verge at the Technical University (TU) of Eindhoven (Verge 1995): Flue instruments can be defined as acoustical systems producing sound as a result of the coupling between a hydrodynamically unstable flow and a resonant acoustic field in a pipe
Summary
Humanity in the course of its cultural development has left some testimony of its acoustic skill, evidenced in the sound-producing objects found across diverse contexts throughout history. For Gartelmann (2006, 168), the art of the pre-Columbian cultures of Ecuador seems to have been heavily laden with a symbolic meaning without implying that many of the works were created only with exclusive artistic intention This can be evidenced in the Chorrera style embodied in ceramic objects. In this work we analyse the external components that make up the double ellipsoid ornithomorphic bottle with a whistle of ChorreraBahía culture (an object belonging to phase five according to Crespo) It includes the analysis of the acoustic effect that occurs in the sound device, which is observed through the external holes located in the head of the bird. This allows us to demonstrate the importance of the arrangement of the components of the acoustic system and to show the different ways these objects produce sound
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