Antler mouthpiece

What was music to the community of the Middle Ages? Archaeology can only partially answer the fundamental question related to the beginnings of the creation and development of musical instruments. Simple rattles and whistles and more complex instruments with several parts for rituals and games of a ludic character are known from excavations. Some were used to produce sound signals in a communication system that can be compared to African tam-tams and hunting. Arabic written sources from the 10th and 11th centuries provide information that the Slavs used various musical instruments, including the so-called mouth aerophones, including horns and trumpets. Material remnants of early medieval instruments are rare, so finding an antler mouthpiece discovered during archaeological research at the cemetery in Wolin is so important and unique. The appearance of a trumpet or a horn cannot be reconstructed on its basis. In this case, a few depictions of Romanesque art monuments are helpful. One of them is a scene on a silver spear from Włocławek from the 2nd half of the 10th century. The warriors depicted in it are blowing horns curved upwards. The instrument shown on the 12th-century Gniezno Doors and the horn from the Gniezno Evangeliary from the 2nd half of the 11th century are directed in a similar direction. Unambiguously, horns for playing are mentioned by Herbord, one of the biographers of St. Otto of Bamberg. The mouthpiece from Wolin could be a part of such an upward curved horn, associated with battle and battle signalling.

Anna Bogumiła Kowalska