The Distribution of Sound Instruments in the Prehistoric Southwestern United States

he sound instruments of the prehistoric peoples of the Southwestern United States have received relatively little attention from either archaeologists or ethnomusicologists. Scattered throughout the literature are descriptions and illustrations of sound instruments which have been found at the many prehistoric sites. Museum collections include the instruments themselves, often mislabeled and without provenience. This paper attempts to draw together the many published references along with the museum specimens in order to present a picture of the musical life of the prehistoric Southwesterners. The Southwest as an archaeological region includes most of the states of Arizona and New Mexico, southern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. It is a region with a long tradition of a sedentary way of life based on farming and a well-developed ceramic technology. The semiarid climate of this region allows for the preservation of materials which in other regions would be lost through decay. The development of dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, provides a means of dating materials from a high percentage of Southwestern sites. The materials which are available for this study include: first, the instruments themselves; second, depictions of the instruments, such as are found as pottery decorations, pictographs, and in the printed murals of Kuaua and Awatovi; and third, the implications from the use of sound instruments by historic groups in the Southwest.