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Soundscape in the archaeological area of Pompei

Conference Paper · September 2007

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 19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS
MADRID, 2-7 SEPTEMBER 2007

SOUNDSCAPE IN THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AREA OF POMPEI

PACS: 43.50.Rq

Brambilla, Giovanni1; De Gregorio, Leda2; Maffei, Luigi2; Masullo, Massimiliano2

1
CNR–Institute of Acoustics “O.M. Corbino”; Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133, Roma,
Italy; giovanni.brambilla@idac.rm.cnr.it
2
Built Environment Control Laboratory Ri.A.S., Second University of Naples; 81031, Aversa
(CE), Italy; luigi.maffei@unina2.it

ABSTRACT
The European Directive 2002/49/EC has addressed the protection of “quiet areas” but these are
not defined adequately. Many researches have pointed out that the classification of “quiet area”
based only on cumulative noise indicators, such as Lden, could be not appropriate and
somewhat misleading in terms of the perceived quality of the sound environment. So far these
researches have been mainly focused on the soundscape of rural areas and of parks in
agglomerations. Among other large areas where “quietness” could be an important feature,
archaeological sites are interesting because their acoustic environment, formed by many
sounds from tourists, outside recreational and commercial activities and surrounding road
traffic, can greatly interfere with the individual enjoyment of the area.
The ruins of Pompei is a worldwide famous large and busy archaeological area, visited by two
millions of tourists every year. The paper describes the results of two surveys carried out in this
site to determine the acoustic environment by sound measurements in selected positions and
binaural recordings along the main tourist walks, together with interviews of a sample of tourists
to get their subjective ratings on some aspects of the area.

INTRODUCTION
Among the objectives of the European Directive 2002/49/EC there is the protection of “quiet
areas” and the importance of this aspect has been recognized also by the implementation of the
Directive into the Italian legislation. However, in protecting quiet areas it is important to detect
their specific acoustic features and correlate them with the reactions of people visiting the area.
In this respect a multidimensional approach to the analysis of soundscape appears to be the
most appropriate, as it takes account of its complexity and multidisciplinarity. According to this
comprehensive methodology, it seems more adequate to think in terms of “area of high acoustic
quality” rather than “quiet areas”, as proposed by Brown [1]. As far as the acoustic quality is
concerned, it is widely recognized that cumulative noise indicators, such as Lden, could be not
appropriate and somewhat misleading in terms of the perceived quality of the acoustic
environment [2].
In the last decade many research projects have been carried out on soundscape in urban and
rural areas and their results, together with proposals for further developments, are regularly
reported in the literature [3] and in structured sessions at international congresses.
However, up to now few information are available on the soundscape in outdoor archaeological
areas, even if they attract and are visited by many people. These areas are interesting because
their acoustic environment, formed by many sounds from tourists, from outside recreational and
commercial activities and from traffic in the surrounding roads, can greatly interfere with the
individual enjoyment of the area.
The paper describes the results of two surveys carried out in the archaelogical area of Pompei
to determine the acoustic environment by sound measurements in selected positions and
binaural recordings along the main tourist walks, together with interviews of a sample of tourists
to get their subjective ratings on some aspects of the area.
EXPERIMENTAL
The archaeological area of Pompei, delimited by the blu line in Fig. 1, covers about 0.7 km2 and
it is delimited by walls with 8 gates. The area is surrounded at the east and west sides by the
railway Circumvesuviana (red lines in Fig. 1, 90 train passages per day on each railway at
average speed of 50 km/h). The south and west sides of the area are also exposed to road
traffic (green line in Fig. 1) with average flow of 100 vehicles/hour, most of which are tourist
buses.

Figure 1.- Aerial view of the archaeological area of Pompei

In order to determine the acoustic environment in the archaeological area two noise surveys
were performed, that is:
a) a preliminary survey carried out on February 2007, including six soundwalks (binaural
recordings) made along the main tourist itineraries to identify the sounds heard by the tourists
during their visit [4] and sound measurements in 14 selected positions (Fig. 2), 1 outside and 13
inside the archaeological area and far from the main tourist itineraries to reduce the influence of
tourist voices on the acoustic environment;

Figure 2.- Selected positions for noise measurements (orange P) and soundwalks (S) in the
preliminary survey and binaural recordings (B) and noise measurement sites (blue P) in the
second survey

b) a second survey carried out on April 2007, in which binaural recordings at five most visited
sites inside the archaeological area were taken at the same time of interviews to visitors nearby
the sites in order to match, as close as possible, the subjective responses to the experienced
sounds [5, 6]; in addition, noise measurements at two positions on roads surrounding the
archaeological area were taken (Fig. 2).

19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS – ICA2007MADRID

The sound measurements taken at each of the 16 selected positions lasted 10 minutes and the
sound pressure level time history was recorded together with the 1/3 octave band spectrum.
During the noise monitoring, the number of vehicles passing along the road and their speed
were taken.
The 11 binaural recordings, each lasting 15 minutes on average, were carried out by
microphones placed on an headset put on the experimenter’s head and connected to a two-
channels sound analysis system.
To interview the tourists in the park, a questionnaire has been used and filled in by 65 people
(26 Italian and 39 foreigners). The questionnaire was designed to collect subject’s personal
information (age, gender, occupational status, nationality), motivations to visit the area, time
spent in the area, number of people together with the interviewee. After this introductory
section, the subject was asked to rank the importance of some aspects for the pleasantness of
the area (clean air, cleanliness, safety, landscape, silence). Afterwards, the quality of above
aspects in the area were judged on a seven point category scale, from “bad” to “very good”. In
addition, it was asked on a dichotomous scale (yes/no) whether some sounds (wind, bird
twittering, voices, road traffic, aircraft fly-overs, dogs barking and music) were expected to be
heard in the park and their elicited annoyance was rated on a seven point category scale, from
“a little annoyed” to “very much annoyed”. At the end of the interview a seven point category
scale, from “very bad” to “very good”, was used to collect ratings on the overall pleasantness of
the area and on the perceived quality of its acoustic environment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Acoustic measurements
The time histories of the sound pressure level recorded inside the archaeological area show
that many sources (natural and non natural) contribute to its acoustic environment. An example
is reported in Fig. 3. Among these sources voices from tourists are frequent in the most visited
sites, while bird twittering, wind, road traffic and aircraft fly-overs are present in least visited
sites and in those close to the borders of the archaeological area.

Figure 3.- Example of SPL time history recorded inside the archaeological area

The box plot given in Fig. 4 shows the variability of LAeq and percentile levels L50 and L90
observed for the binaural recodings taken along the main tourist itineraries and at the most
visited sites together with that obtained for the measurements at the least visited sites, coded A
and B in the plot respectively. The voices of tourists in the most visited sites rise the LAeq to an
average value of 63.5 dB(A) and within a range of 17 dB (from 52 to 69 dB(A)). Values smaller
of about 10 dB (average LAeq = 53 dB(A) and range from 46 to 60 dB(A)) are observed for the
least visited sites. Regarding the L50 values, only in one site (P2 shown in Fig. 2) the observed
L50 (37.1 dB(A)) was lower than 38 dB(A), the proposed threshold to predict the categorization
in quiet and non-quiet areas [7].
To consider the spectral features of the recorded sounds, the unweighted spectrum centre of
gravity G, proposed in [8], has been calculated according to the following formula:

19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS – ICA2007MADRID

 ∑ [10
i
Li / 10
× Bi ]
G= (Eq. 1)

∑ [10
i
Li / 10
]
where Li is the unweighted sound level in dB, measured for each third octave band with centre
frequency Bi and ranging from 80 Hz to 8 kHz. This indicator is plotted in Fig. 5 versus the
corresponding values of L50 for each site inside and outside the archaeological area.

70

60
SPL dB(A)

50

40

A B A B A B
30
LAeq L50 L90

Figure 4.- Box plot of LAeq and percentile levels L50 and L90 measured at the most (A)
and least (B) visited sites in the archaeological area
3.2
Centre of gravity of the spectrum G log(Hz)

3.0

2.8

2.6

2.4

2.2

2.0
Most visited sites inside the area
1.8 Least visited sites inside the area
Road traffic outside the area
1.6
36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66
L50 dB(A)

Figure 5.- Centre of gravity of the spectrum G versus L50

Interviews to the visitors

The main characteristics of the sample of people interviewed are given in Table I. As expected,
most of them visit the area for tourism (89%) and stay for a period longer than two hours (72%).
The aspects of the area considered by the subjects most important for its pleasantness are
reported in Fig. 6 as number of responses. Quietness was ranked last as the most important
factor (35% of subjects). The ratings on the quality of these aspects in the area are also plotted
in Fig. 6. Quitness was rated very good by only 12% of subjects.

Table I.- Characteristics of the sample of people interviewed

Age
Nationality N. subjects Male Female
18-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 > 60
Italians 26 15 11 9 3 7 4 3
Foreigners 39 15 24 8 11 10 8 2
Total 65 30 35 17 14 17 12 5

19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS – ICA2007MADRID

 Clean
1 air
40

30

20

Quietness5 Cleanliness
2
10

Landscape4 3Safety

Figure 6.- Most important aspects of the area for its pleasantness (blue line)
and corresponding rating of their quality (red line)

Voices and natural sounds (bird twittering and wind) are the most expected sounds to be heard
in the area and those least expected (from road traffic and aircraft fly-overs) are also the most
annoying, as shown in Fig. 7, confirming that the most is the expectation to hear a sound the
less is the evoked annoyance.
25
% of subjects highly annoyed by the sound

20 aircraft fly-over

road traffic
15 voices
music

10 dog barking

5
bird
twittering

0 wind
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
% of subjects expecting to hear the sound

Figure 7.- Percentage of subjects highly annoyed and auditory subjective expectation

The sound environment was rated good or very good by 50% of subjects, while 81% like the
area much or very much. The scatter plot given in Fig. 8 reports, for each position where
interviews were carried out (Fig.2), the percentage of subjects rating the overall quality of the
area as “good” or “very good” versus the corresponding percentage of “good” or “very good”
quality of the perceived soundscape. As most of the experimental data lie above the dashed
line, most frequently subjects tend to rate more positively the overall quality of the area rather
than its soundscape.
30
B1
% of subjects rating the area as good

25 B2

20
B3, B5

15

10
B4

5
5 10 15 20 25 30
% of subjects rating the sound environment as good

Figure 8.- Percentage of subjects reporting “good” or “very good” overall perceived quality of the
area and corresponding perceived quality of soundscape at the position of the interviews (Fig.2)
5

19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS – ICA2007MADRID

 CONCLUSIONS
The noise monitoring and the interviews to the visitors of the archaeological area have provided
information on its perceived quality useful to improve its pleasantness and make the visit more
enjoyable. As expected, the analysis of the visitors’ ratings has clearly confirmed the
multidimensionality of soundscape perception and how indices more appropriate than LAeq or
dB(A) are strongly needed to characterise adequately not only the quiet areas, but also those
having specific features and use, like the archaeological areas. On this issue the present study
is a first attempt towards the above objective.

References
[1] A.L. Brown: Rethinking “quiet areas” as “areas of high acoustic quality”. Proceedings Internoise 2006,
paper 839, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, December 2006.
[2] K. Genuit, A. Fiebig: Psychoacoustics and its Benefit for the Soundscape Approach. Acta Acustica
united with Acustica 92 (2006) 952-958.
[3] B. Schulte-Fortkamp, D. Dubois: Recent Advances in Soundscape Research. Acta Acustica united with
Acustica, special issue, 92 (2006) 857-964.
[4] C. Semidor: Listening to a City with the Soundwalk Method. Acta Acustica united with Acustica 92
(2006) 959-964.
[5] G. Brambilla, L. Maffei: Responses to noise in urban parks and in rural quiet areas. Acta Acustica
united with Acustica, 92 (2006) 881-886.
[6] G. Brambilla, L. Maffei, G. Zambon: Preserving natural quiet areas and urban parks. Proceedings
Internoise 2006, paper 465, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, December 2006.
[7] D. Botteldooren, S. Decloedt, J. Bruyneel, S. Pottie: Characterisation of quiet areas: subjective
evaluation and sound level indices. Proceedings Forum Acusticum, Berlin, Germany, March 1999.
[8] M. Raimbault, C. Lavandier, M. Bérengier: Ambient sound assessment of urban environments: field
studies in two French cities. Applied Acoustics 64 (2003) 1241-1256.

19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACOUSTICS – ICA2007MADRID

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