Sonic Horizons of the Mesolithic: using sound to engage wider audiences with Early Holocene research

This article examines the work of the Sonic Horizons of the Mesolithic project in using sound to address the pressing issue of engaging wider audiences with the British Mesolithic. It describes the process of collaboration between archaeologists and musicians to create a continuous thirty-four-minute sound fabric which draws directly on research into the Early Mesolithic archaeology of the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire (England). By considering the various responses from a range of audiences at installation events carried out in the summer of 2013, the adaptability and versatility of this approach for communicating complex research narratives to non-academic audiences is evaluated, and possible new directions for similar approaches to encapsulating archaeological landscapes through sound are drawn. As such, the article represents a pioneering new methodology for communicating high-level archaeological concepts to wider audiences, and suggests novel ways in which archaeological research could be disseminated beyond the academic sphere in the future.