 So I'm Raquel from the University of Valladolid and I want to discuss some ideas, they're not very well developed, but some of the ideas I've been having were working in some outreach and educational projects regarding music archaeology. As any other social science, music archaeology proposes particular narratives about human cultures, which often project onto the past modern musical identities and concepts that legitimate contemporary social and political agendas. This transmission not only affects how we understand past music, but also how we comprehend human societies and their histories as a whole. These narratives about past music have been transferred to the general audience since the first attempts to write a history of the origins and evolution of music in 19th century Europe, which were as the rest of the social sciences of the time, evolutionistic, orientalist, racist, profoundly etnocentric, eager to find nationalistic traits and totally oblivious of social organizations other than the gender binary heteropatriarchy. This transmission was not exclusively done from academic literature and the more general volumes on music history, but also from opera and since the 20th century from peplum movies to other audiovisual products and later on from historical renaissance. I will show you a little bit of this orientalistic approach to ancient music. I think that's enough there to get an idea of it. These visions, sorry, not yet. These visions are reinforced by a surprise surprisingly widely spread concept of music, which understands it as a universal language and not as the cultural one that it is. Music had a physical and universal truth behind it than Western classical musical harmony and aesthetics would have unveiled its deepest secrets. This could situate Western classical traditions at the top of an imaginary evolutionary musical pyramid which would have started with less complex and nonharmonic non-Western traditions. However, a new psychology shows to what extent this is a false premise. Music is a universal cultural behavior, but it is a culturally conditioned language. Also, hunted gathers such as the picnic or the bushmen show some of the most complex musical structures in the world. And we all know as well how incredibly developed are the musical concepts and aesthetics of the Caluli drumming in Papua and Ovarinea. None of these musics and many others in the world show any less musical complexity, conceptual depth and aesthetic awareness than European classical traditions. At the same time that change and progress is deeply embedded in the Western conception of musicality, another essential aspect is the idea of continuity from a distant past which legitimates modern ideological and political agendas. We have to remember that music has been a key part of all the folkloristic revivals and nationalistic moments born on the 19th century Europe. The quest for national music and its origins lasted for at least 100 years, as little is comparable on how powerful music is to strengthen feelings of identity and group cohesion. These evolutionistic and nationalistic conceptions of music come often also with assumptions about race and gender roles. Very often, past European music is assumed to have been invented, performed or developed by men in fairly distant past musical cultures we don't have any gender information whatsoever. And indeed, these concepts are still well engraved in the general public idea of finishing music. I was recently interviewed by the Spanish National Radio about music archaeology and some of the earliest evidences of musical behaviors. This program has a final section where the audience leaves messages commented on the subject discussed. To my surprise, the comments of the audience show the bias of 19th century approaches to past and non-Western music. One woman assured that all Basque musical instruments came from Paleolithic times. This idea is based on all comparisons between the 25,000-year-old student flutes with the beautiful traditional Basque flute called the Chistu. A man said that Paleolithic humans probably made music by hitting themselves and making noises and single-tone melodies. However, we have many proofs on how complex Paleolithic musical instruments and how many notes they could play. Finally, a third person suggested that the first music was probably a primordial lullaby sung by a mother to her offspring. I'm aware that I may be stretching a little bit the argument, but it is helpful to show how our conceptions of gender roles are falsely believed to be universal. It is true that music archaeology is a relatively new as a discipline, and certain decades old theoretical discussions that have challenged the endocentric visions of Western academia have not been intensively developed, such as post-colonial theory, queer theory, or gender studies. However, in this presentation, I don't pretend to introduce these theoretical issues in the music archaeology theoretical panorama, but following my experience with two different exhibitions, the Ake Musika one from the IMAP, and another one that is currently going on in the Numanthi Museum of Soria. And the project, that five years old project that deals with dissemination in music archaeology, this IMAP, European Music Archaeology Project, I would like to share some ideas about how we can escape these harmful narratives. How we can carry a discussion later on on how best to approach these problems while still trying to offer products that are artistically relevant and still significant for the general public. And luckily, evolutionary conceptions of past music and culture are often seen in contemporary reenactments of ancient music. For instance, many groups propose music with very simplistic musical structures and ideas, reinforcing the evolutionary conceptions for the general audience. If all the music that is going to be performing more the reconstructions of ancient music in a way of ancient instruments is at the end of the day contemporary music, there is no need for pretending simple music was enough in the past. We have experienced, and so I deeply believe that the more developed musical thought in contemporary reenactments makes this music more artistically interesting and far more appealing to the general audience. And I think we have achieved this in some of the EMA performances. For instance, with Arquistena, with Maribel, this wonderful performance you have here or in the Krunan also performance that was part of this project. Also, when seven years ago a group of ten European institutions applied for funding for a music archaeology exhibition, this one I was talking about, we convinced the European agency that we were going to reinforce European identity and common roots. We were very guilty of that. The European Commission was eager to fund our project which had the best evaluation ever for a project in that particular strand of the cultural program. However, in the archaeo music exhibition even if we mainly showed remains from the European continent as we were asked to do, we did not overlook the connections and derivations from other areas such as the Middle East or Northern Africa. For instance, I showed you some photos of our exhibition. We also included Islamic medieval remains from Spain and Portugal trying to avoid a narrative where the Pagan, Roman and Christian past were the single background of European culture. Ever since Said wrote his revolutionary essay, Orientalism, the academia has been aware of the harmful depictions of the exotic oriental and how they have legitimized colonialism and imperialism. So it is very important that we avoid any orientalistic depictions of the past no matter how appealing they can be for the general audiences when we perform music. And luckily, there is a strong tendency in reenactment groups to go Oriental when performing and composing ancient music. For instance, us in the children book of the IMA project which I co-authored with Cai Zalun that is present here, Alandelo's music culture was included, but we avoided the problematic topics that Western representation usually proposes as appealing as they can be for our Western tastes such as sensual belly dancers or exotic settings in the Alhambra Palace or in the Hamam. On another topic, most of the time model concepts about race and gender roles are clearly present in the reconstructions of past music. For instance, when illustrations of performances show music in Paleolithic times they always depict white male playing or building the instruments. That it was white males who did it seems to be understood as the more logical hypothesis but we don't have proof of that whatsoever. There is no data or indication that this was the case so probably it would be about time to introduce women or non-binary individuals playing and making instruments in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. This is not truer than the other depictions but it is also not any less true and it would help changing our contemporary understanding of the world. Also DNA studies are pointing to the fact that Paleolithic European populations were not white. Why don't we instead of depicting white Paleolithic male musicians choose to represent black Paleolithic European women playing flutes? How strong this narrative change would be in the world that we live in? This, of course, does not mean that we must depile women at all costs even when the archaeological or philological information is telling us otherwise. For instance, in the exhibition I created for the Archaeological Museum of Soria I chose to represent male characters playing the trumpets as my sources pointed to that cultural description but I wanted to show women so I showed women decorating trumpets. We don't know who did it but in many ethnographic cultures the women are in charge of the pottery decorations. Calciberian women are almost never represented in Calciberian settings doing anything other than working in the loom and cooking so I made a conscious choice of having them doing something else in a public museum challenging the narrative of the numantine genius male painters. I am aware that public engagement can only be achieved by a certain degree of negotiation between these scientific and theoretical approaches and the artistic and entertainment expectations of the audiences. However, I propose that the music archaeology community, researchers, artists and musicians actively engage in this type of discussions and that we could even suggest an ethical manifesto for the representations of past music cultures. And thanks for listening.