Audio Clips

The ringing rock on the Hebridean island of Iona, Scotland. This lithophone has a small hammerstone lodged in a specially carved hollow in it. No one seems to know who did this or when. This is one of the latest lithophone sites to be included in the DPT’s ongoing archaeoacoustic survey.

Left picture shows part of one of the rugged outcrops on the Carn Menyn ridge in the Preseli hills of southwest Wales, source area of most of the Stonehenge bluestones. Right picture shows the DPT director testing rocks there for sound -- successfully. This was in 2005, and was an exploratory visit which ultimately led to the instigation of the Royal College of Art's later "Landscape & Perception" project (www.landscape-perception.com). The sound of this ringing rock can be heard through the roaring sound of the wind - this was a crude first field recording.

Devereux "plays" the lithophone at a remote vision quest site in California. The rock art marking (perhaps over 1,000 years old) on it may possibly represent the spirit that was believed to inhabit the rock -- a widespread belief in the ancient Americas and other ancient societies. 

The Balephetrist Ringing Rock (or Stone) is on the Inner Hebridean island of Tiree, Scotland. It is in an isolated, beach-edge position on the northern coast of Tiree. Not a native rock of the island, it is covered by over 50 cup marks, thought to be Bronze Age, and seemingly caused by repeated striking of the rock over untold centuries.