Audibility of Chacoan Tower Kivas: analysing sound propagation across a prehistoric landscape

Abstract

Tower kivas are unusual features of the Chacoan landscape, ones which have been repeatedly explored through GIS-based visibility analyses. The visual significance of monuments and structures has long been a topic of discussion amongst archaeologists, in part due to the availability of computational environments which facilitate rapid analysis of visual spaces. However, sight is not the only sense through which humans perceive their surroundings or the monumental significance of the built environment, as sound and hearing also play an important role in these cognitive processes. This study uses the System for the Prediction of Acoustic Detectability (SPreAD-GIS) to assess the auditory significance of tower kivas on a landscape scale and examine whether they provided an advantage in facilitating the propagation of sound to nearby dwelling sites. It finds that tower kivas provided a noticeable if inconsistent advantage in spreading cultural sounds to a greater number of disparate settlements, and discusses how these structures may have been perceived by the people who lived near them as part of an integrated sensory landscape.