IN SEARCH OF LOST MUSIC

A history of humanity through the archaeology of musical instruments. Similar to Neil MacGregor's HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 100 OBJECTS, Graeme Lawson's history is built up of around 60 microhistories that are also detective stories: things found and interpreted, fragments of music and instruments from around the world recovered from digs and under the sea, and the long lost music itself reconstructed using clues and the most up-to-date technology.

Lawson's book is an exploration of music not just in its conventional role as pastime, entertainment and religious expression but also, more profoundly, as a medium in which people commemorated their pasts and communicated with each other, negotiated and formed their identities, relationships and communities.

What is 'music' really? How have we come to be so dependent on it? Why do we need it to underscore so many important moments in our lives? Why do we risk deafening ourselves with amplification? When did our ancestors first feel the pull of a catchy melody or a foot-tapping rhythm, and what effect has their musical legacy had on shaping who we are today?'

This is the first and only such history of man and music done by an academic who has actually made and performed these instruments.

Dr Graeme Lawson is a fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and a fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. He is a pioneer in his field, and an extraordinary polymath: archaeologist, scientist, musicologist, instrument maker and performer, who has been at the centre of research in this subject for the whole of his career. He brings an amazing range of direct personal experience to bear, and is able to show with enormous authority and style how far music and humans have been intimately intertwined for ever. He says audiences go wild when he plays his 27,000-year-old bone flute.