Rock Music: An Auditory Assessment of Knapping

We explore and describe the auditory landscape that emerges from stone tool making. Using two trained musicians, we identify the pitches and octaves produced from percussion knapping. We also analyze whether knapping sounds vary by raw material, knapper skill level, or by flake size. Our results show that our chosen stone material types each displayed a single fundamental pitch (E or G) with one or two additional octaves present, and each individual nodule maintained the same pitch throughout reduction. Knappers of different skills produced no differences in pitch, but there were significant differences in octaves present. Different raw materials showed significant differences in both pitch and octaves present. Flake size did not seem to influence either pitch or octaves present. The acoustic landscape resulting from knapping was certainly even more diverse than what we documented here, and likely influenced hominin stone tool production and learning, cognition, language, and music.