ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the recent growth of interest in sound, the impact of which is being felt not only in the discipline of anthropology, but also in the related fields of art, architecture and archaeology, to name just a few. A landscape may be audible, but to be aural it would have to have been first rendered by a technique of sound art or recording, such that it can be played back within an environment in which people are otherwise deprived of sensory stimulus. It would be unfortunate if studies of auditory perception were to follow suit, and to lose touch with sound just as visual studies have lost touch with light. The chapter deals with a couple of points that address not the concept of soundscape itself but rather its implied emphasis on, first, embodiment, and second, emplacement. The sweep of sound continually endeavours to tear listeners away, causing them to surrender to its movement.
