Bone Pipes
Bone pipes represent the most numerous archaeological sound device from the Anglo-Saxon period. While some are sounded as flutes, and many are categorised as such, they did in fact also act as reed pipes and were perhaps even sounded with a trumpet-style mouthpiece. Only about a third of the archaeological finds of bone pipes are certainly duct flutes, identified due to the window, even though the majority of archaeological bone pipes are identified as such. Some of the remainder were sounded by reeds while the sounding mechanism of the rest of the archaeological finds is unknown.
On some of the archaeological specimens, the fingerholes are relatively close together, and may have suited a child’s hand better than an adult’s hand. Some of these bone pipes may even have been made for children, although they could still have been used by adults. The number of fingerholes ranges from 0 to 7. It is also possible some of the bone pipes represent only partially finished instruments, or that they did not work once made so were thrown away unused. Usewear analysis, often under the microscope, can help to establish how much a bone pipe was used prior to deposition.
This simple diagram shows what is referred to as the window and finger hole. The diagram is of a duct flute but fingerholes apply to all bone pipe types. The fingerholes are covered and uncovered to make the pipe play different pitches. Fingerholes can also be called toneholes and could be covered by either the fingers or the thumb.
Click on the links below to explore examples of the different types of bone pipes:
If you would like to know more about bone pipes, you may be interested in the following works:
Leaf, H. 2006 English Medieval Bone Flutes c. 450-1550 AD. PhD. UCL.
Taylor, L. 2021 Early Medieval Bone Pipes: Understanding the Sounds of These Instruments through Reconstruction, Exarc, 4. To read this article, click here.