The Sonic Heritage series presents itself as a platform for intellectual and methodological inquiry aimed at redefining the complexity of sonic heritage through a transdisciplinary perspective. At the heart of this editorial project lies an acute awareness of the amphibious nature of musical heritage—an entity that challenges traditional categorisations by constantly oscillating between the tangibility of the object and the immateriality of experience. For too long, the notion of musical heritage has been anchored to the materiality of the find (monuments, scores, and instruments), leaving the living and performative dimension, which constitutes the very essence of sound, in the background. The series intends, instead, to investigate tangible and intangible musical and sonic heritage as an integrated system, where the material document (be it an archaeological find or a manuscript score) serves merely as the point of departure for a more profound reconstruction involving listening, performance, and perception inextricably linked to the society that produced it.
This inquiry moves along the delicate intersection that considers the soundscape (Murray Schafer)—the sonic environment understood as a perceived milieu that defines the cultural identity of a community—and the historical, social, and religious context of that collectivity. In this framework, the concept of the historical soundscape becomes a fundamental investigative tool for exploring the sounds of the past, transcending mere antiquarian curiosity to reconstruct the “meshworks” (Tim Ingold): those webs of interrelations between space, time, and sound that allowed ancient societies to inhabit the world and imbue it with meaning. Studying sonic heritage thus entails addressing the challenge of acoustemology (Stefen Feld), or rather, understanding how knowledge of the world is mediated through listening. The series promotes the idea of sound as an instrument of knowledge, capable of surmounting the limitations of “ocularcentrism” to restore an unprecedented sensory depth.
A decisive pillar of the series is dedicated to the performative nature of musical heritage. While the deterioration of a fresco or the collapse of a temple represents irremediable material losses, the loss of a performance tradition or the capacity to interpret a notation system marks the definitive demise of musical heritage in its immaterial component. Safeguarding, therefore, cannot be limited to the physical conservation of media; it must extend to the capacity to reproduce and restore the sound itself. Sonic Heritage thus explores the interaction between applied and architectural acoustics, utilising digital heritage technologies to overcome the obsolescence of analogue media and the fragility of performative contexts. Through digital audible history, the series documents how acoustic modelling and augmented reality can transform static artefacts into dynamic experiences, offering to female and male scholars, as well as female and male researchers, new analytical models to evaluate the sonic impact of immersive experiences.
Ultimately, Sonic Heritage serves as a research space that embraces the challenge of complexity, where the visualisation of performance spaces merges with their auralisation. It is a series that speaks of the past but lives in the present, employing the analysis of biophony, geophony, and anthrophony to understand how sound was, and remains, a central pillar of the ecosystem in which human beings are immersed. The rediscovery of sonic heritage represents the cornerstone of a new, profound understanding of our history and our sonic environment. The ultimate endeavour is to transform the ephemeral nature of sound into an accessible memory, capable of resonating for centuries to come.

Editor-in-Chief
Angela Bellia, University of Palermo, Italy: angela.bellia@unipa.it
Scientific Committee
Erica Angliker, University of Palermo, Italy: erica.angliker@gmail.com
Marianna Castiglione, University of Palermo, Italy: marianna.castiglione1@gmail.com
Fábio Vergara Cerqueira, Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil: fabiovergara@uol.com.br
Heidi Köpp-Junk, Egyptian Archaeology at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, and the Seminar for Egyptology and Coptic Studies, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen: kontakt@heidikoepp.de
Manolis Mikrakis, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece: emikrakis@arch.ntua.gr
Daniel Sánchez Muñoz, University of Huddersfield (Great Britain) / University of Valladolid (Soria Campus), Spain: danielsanmu1992@gmail.com
Arnaud Saura-Ziegelmeyer, Institut catholique de Toulouse, France: a.sauraziegelmeyer@gmail.com