The series ‘Bibliographies of Ancient Musical Instruments and Music Cultures’, of which the present compilation by Martin van Schaik is the first volume, provides a long-expected research tool for the study of archaeological and/or historical musical instruments, and related music cultures. Music Archaeology is still an emerging discipline, and combines a variety of long-established and newly developed scientific approaches that are sometimes unrelated in conventional academic activities. Consequently researchers are often faced with published information that is widely dispersed, often in rather rare journals and books, and it can take decades to reach a satisfactory overview in any given cultural/historical area. Fortunately a number of music archaeologists, concentrating on specific topics since the 1980s and 1990s, have compiled bibliographical surveys. It is the purpose of the present series to make this valuable information more widely available. Of course no single volume can claim to be exhaustive. But we do hope to present here the most important works, and many particular studies, that are otherwise easily overlooked or even remain unrecognized.
