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If someone hands you a large, spiral seashell, chances are that your instinct will drive you to hold it up to your ear. Thousands of years ago, however, prehistoric communities in modern-day Spain raised them to their lips.
In a study published today in the journal Antiquity, researchers experimented with archaeological artifacts in a special way—by using them directly. They studied and tested conch shell trumpets from Neolithic (around 7000 to 1700 BCE) sites in Catalonia, Spain. Their firsthand approach revealed that the prehistoric trumpets would have been great for long-distance communication and could also have been musical instruments.
Catalonia is just one of many places around the world where humans used seashells to make noises. But the shell trumpets found there have been largely overlooked in academia, according to an Antiquity statement.
“It was known that several Charonia lampas shells had been discovered within a relatively small area of Catalonia—specifically, in the lower course of the Llobregat River and the pre-coastal depression of the Penedès region, to the east of the city of Barcelona,” said Margarita Díaz-Andreu, co-author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona. “They had their apexes removed, leading some researchers to suggest they may have served as musical instruments.” The apex of a shell is the spiral’s tip.
Furthermore, evidence suggests that humans probably gathered the shells after the mollusk inside had died—obviously not for eating, but to use them as instruments to produce sound. To further test this theory, Díaz-Andreu and her colleague Miquel López-Garcia, also a co-author and an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona, studied the shell trumpets and played them to understand their acoustic characteristics. The shells used in the study are between 5,000 and 7,000 years old. Who knows how long it had been since these tools had made sounds?
Luckily, López-Garcia is also a professional trumpet player, so in addition to seeing if they could have been used in long-distance communication, he could also assess their capacity as musical instruments. The duo ultimately found that “the shell trumpets are capable of producing high-intensity sounds and would have been highly effective for long-distance communication,” explained López-Garcia. “However, they are also capable of producing melodies through pitch modulation, so the possibility that these shells were also used as musical instruments with an expressive intention cannot be ruled out.”
The Catalonian region in question was densely populated, and shell trumpets have come to light across broad areas of settlements, indicating that they would have supported communication both within and between groups. They were probably involved in the region’s agricultural and mining activities. As such, the study suggests that the shell trumpets influenced Neolithic communities’ spatial, economic, and social dynamics, bridging gaps with sound-based communication, as well as possibly music.
“Our study reveals that Neolithic people used conch shells not only as musical instruments, but also as powerful tools for communication,” said Professor Díaz-Andreu, “reshaping how we understand sound, space, and social connection in early prehistoric communities.”
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