Potty sounds

[AndiFlatland]

A few years ago, some archaeologists had a crazy theory that sounds from man's distant past may have been unwittingly recorded in the grooves made in clay pots as they spun upon the potter's wheel, and were planning to conduct experiments to see if they could hear anything.
Does anybody know if anything ever came of this?

[kempie]

The Discovery Channel show Mythbusters pretty much disproved that discernable sounds could be recorded, although some generic acoustic phenomena can be found on pottery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics

[wildwood]

No doubt they had a sizable grant to conduct such a mindboggling life altering experiment. How any level headed person could think that there would be any significant audio recording embedded in the grooves is beyond me.

[riskman]

the actual programme was fascinating and although the final conclusion was that you wouldn't get a narative from the family on a sunday morning there was indeed a slight possibility for some pots to hold generic background sounds - not worth persuing but remains interesting...

[AndiFlatland]

Thanks to the 3 of you.
Kempie:
I didn't know there had been a programme about it on the Discovery Channel - mainly bacause I'm one of the diminishing number of people who are resisting all exhortations to add a vast number of new channels to the 5 I already have, and which I find perfectly adequate! Obviously I'm missing out here and there, as this gap in my knowledge proves.
The title of the programme, you say, was Mythbusters - was this the same series as one that went out on BBC2 earlier this year? I saw most of those programmes, and don't recall any of the items being about this particular topic. It could have been in one of those I missed, of course.
Wildwood:
Ah! A right old cynic there, eh! Yes, it is amazing just what apparently hairbrained ideas people come up with, and how much money they can get granted from public funds for their investigations, isn't it? Such an idea may not be imbued with the possibility of finding the answer to life, the universe and everything - but they said Arthur C.Clarke was bonkers when he had the idea in 1947 of bouncing radio signals off little spacecraft in geostationary orbit. Without him, how much longer may we have had to wait for the Discovery Channel to rise above the horizon? :-)
Riskman:
Remains interesting indeed - and who knows where such ideas may lead us?
Now all we have to do is find some ancient form of accidental video recorder, so we can really find out how they built the Pyramids, and why they built Stonehenge! Anybody out there want to take up that one? (No, come on, I'm only joking... or am I?)

[kempie]

It is indeed the Mythbusters as shown (and re-edited from 48-minute to 28-minute episodes) by the BBC but the episode features in Series 4 of the 6 so far filmed and so could be years away if BBC2 continue to air the show for its entire run.