The islamic clay drum of rua da Cadeia (Silves, Portugal). A contribution of archaeology to a better understanding of the worldview of al-Andalus

Abstract

Research in the field of music and musical instruments of the Middle Ages hás mainly been based on written and visual sources, such as sculpture, or even iconographic decorations present in manuscripts of various types. Besides being scarce, these sources are only available with sufficient integrity from the 13 th /14 th centuries on. Nevertheless, the higher amount of archaeological work carried out in Portugal since the 1990s has revealed new rigorous data, in large part due to the increasing importance given to preventive archaeology, carbon-dating methods, and rigorous stratigraphical analysis. These sources, however, are still scarce, and seldom well preserved. Because of this, they have only occasionally been integrated in extensive studies of music, its agents, instruments, and practices. Concerning the Portuguese al-Andalus itself, fewer than a dozen musical instruments have been identified in archaeological contexts that can be traced  to the period of Islamic, Arabian, and Berber cultural influence and political domination of the Iberian Peninsula. Taking this into account and resorting to an unpublished ceramic drum discovered in Silves in an archaeological context of the Almohad period, this work strives to highlight the potentialities of the study of these artifacts and hint new directions in the interpretation of this musical instrument and of the sociocultural contexts in which it was produced and played, aiming at a deeper understanding of worldview in the Middle Ages in Portuguese al-Andalus. Besides describing the object by itself, this work aims to articulate it with iconography and other coeval sources, as well as with ethnographic parallels.