Sound of Stones: The Music Archaeology of Chime Stones in Ancient China

This book focuses on researching the chime stone (qing ?), a percussion instrument carved from stone that originated in ancient China. In antiquity, people regarded the chime stone as an important musical instrument because its presence indicated the wealth and status of the tomb owners. In the late Neolithic Age, people discovered the differences between each type of stone and their sound qualities. Chime stone manufacture focused on the timbre of the natural stone, as opposed to both materials and sounding based selection in later periods, which formed a part of making a perfect and delicate chime stone. In the earlier period the chime stone was only a musical instrument for producing rhythmic sound, but as time went by, chime stones gradually became melodic instruments and were played with string, wind, and other percussion instruments in ensemble. The book is divided into 10 chapters. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive view of existing research, sets out the aims of the present research alongside material sources and methodology, elaborates the theoretical framework of the book, and clarifies terminology in both English and Chinese. A summary of the main chime stone finds of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valley areas, together with geographical features of these distributions, is provided in Chapter 2. Chapters 3 to 8 contain an in-depth discussion of the chime stones unearthed from those regions, including classification and typology, shape, manufacture, assemblage and performance of the chime stones as well as the detailed tone measurement and analysis. Chapter 9 examines the acoustic properties of chime stones. Chapter 10 looks at the use and function of chime stones, which includes the role of chime stones in ancient ensembles, cultural context, use in ritual music, and the symbolic meaning of chime stones in ancient China.