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HELEN LEAF
Man's interest in making music stretches into the distant past, and though a variety of instruments may have been used, the one that survives best in the archaeological record is the bone flute. Megawbrought these instruments to prominence in the 1960s with articles such as 'Penny Whistles and Prehistory' (1960). There are fine examples of bone flutes from prehistoric times, but it is from Anglo-Saxon and Medieval times that we have a greater number of flutes available for study. The few well known examples made familiar by Megaw and Barrett in the 1960s, such as those from Canterbury, White Castle and Keynsham Abbey are remarkable instruments, yet they comprise only a small portion of the flutes available for study. My current research has identified over a hundred flutes that have been found in England, around a third of which are complete. This gives us a huge body of evidence, made even more significant by their dearth of representation in contemporary manuscripts and iconography.
The bones used to make the flutes are usually the wing bones ( ulna ) of birds (mainly geese) and the leg bones ( tibia or metatarsal ) of mammals (mainly sheep). The ulna needs little modification as its thin-walled, long narrow shape makes it ideally suited for use as a wind instrument. The narrow bore tends to produce an instrument that overblows easily, with a wide range of notes available from a small number of holes. The metatarsal, and to a much lesser extent the tibia, requires material to be removed from the exterior of the bone to make an instrument that is easy to handle and play. The shape is shorter with a wider bore, making an instrument that does not overblow so easily, and that may need more holes in order to achieve a wide range of notes. Using the evidence gathered to date, provisional 'types' of flutes can be noted, according to the species of bird or animal used, and the number and placement of toneholes. A representative range of these types is shown in Figure 1 .
TYPES OF FLUTESThe most common form of flute is made from the ulna of a bird (40% of all currently known flutes). Goose bone flutes are...