The XV Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from August 24-27, 2017. The symposium is intended to establish a platform of current research on topics such as prehistoric human music cultures and their respective sound tools, or the archaeoacoustics of caves and other prehistoric sites. Besides reflecting current projects and results, it is intended to deepen ongoing discussions, and to publish the information in an anthology.

Possible sessions of the symposium are the making, playing, and meaning of bird bone pipes or any other sound artefacts believed to be Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic musical instruments, the evolution of human neurobiology in relation to sound production/music-making, the archaeoacoustics of prehistoric sites, or organological developments and cultural interactions in the earliest phase of human music.

During the symposium, a panel and round table funded by the European Music Archaeology Project will be held. The event is intended to reconsider divergent views on the perforated thighbone of a cave bear excavated in the Divje babe I cave, Slovenia, which lead to the heated controversy if this object could be a flute produced in the time of the Neanderthals. The find stimulated research over the last two decades, and the debate is still going on in the light of latest laboratorial results. On the workshop and round table both pro- and counter-arguments will be addressed and openly discussed.