Kostomarov V. M., Krestyannikov K. Yu., Turnov D. P. Reconstructing the Soundscape of a Siberian City from the 17th to the Early 20th Century: Methodological and Source Study Opportunities (The Case of Tyumen)

Vladimir M. Kostomarov
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Tyumen State University (Russia, Tyumen)
ORCID: 0000-0002-8667-3809
E-mail: vkostomarov@yandex.ru

Kirill Yu. Krestyannikov
Tyumen State University (Russia, Tyumen)
ORCID: 0000-0001-6021-9459
E-mail: k.y.krestyannikov@utmn.ru

Danil M. Turnov
Tyumen State University (Russia, Tyumen)
ORCID: 0009-0005-3435-7635
E-mail: dan72rus@gmail.ru

 Download | Back to the Content № 3. 2025

UDC 94(571.12)«16/19»
DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2025-4-3-52-61

ABSTRACT. The article examines the methodological aspects of reconstructing a historical soundscape using the example of the Siberian historical settlement of Tyumen from the 17th to early 20th centuries. The study offers a unique example of “recreating” a city’s soundscape using written sources. It analyzes the evolution of the source material, from early administrative documents to the popular periodicals of the early 20th century. The historiography of soundscape research by Western and Russian scholars is explored in detail. The need for a differentiated methodological approach to different chronological periods, depending on the nature and comprehensiveness of the sources, is demonstrated and confirmed. For the 17th–18th centuries, only hypothetical modeling is possible, for the 19th century, partial structural reconstruction, and for the early 20th century, comprehensive restoration of the soundscape. Using materials from Sibirskaya torgovaya gazeta (Siberian Trade Newspaper), travelers’ notes, and cartographic sources, the transformation of Tyumen’s soundscape from a hi-fi to a lo-fi environment is traced in the context of modernization processes. The study reveals new aspects of studying Siberian historical cities, with the potential to extend similar research methods to cities in the Ural-Volga region and Central Russia. It is concluded that studying written sources to identify “non-standard,” “secondary” information about sounds holds promise for reconstructing a comprehensive picture of the history of urban settlements and advancing an understanding of the macro-processes of the past, tracing the signs of changing eras and the qualitative manifestations of these changes in the sound of the urban environment (for example, the emergence of new sounds associated with technological progress and the formation of an industrial society).

KEYWORDS: soundscape, historical ecoacoustics, Tyumen, methodology, historical sources, sensory history, urbanization, Siberia

For citation: Kostomarov V. M., Krestyannikov K. Yu., Turnov D. P. [Reconstructing the Soundscape of a Siberian City from the 17th to the Early 20th Century: Methodological and Source Study Opportunities (The Case of Tyumen)]. Istoriko-geograficheskiy zhurnal [Historical Geography Journal], 2025, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 52–61. DOI: 10.58529/2782-6511-2025-4-3-52-61 (In Russian).

Received 3 August 2025
Accepted 21 October 2025

© 2025 The Authors

REFERENCES

  • Corbin A. Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. (In English).
  • Lapin V. V. Peterburg: zapakhi i zvuki [Petersburg: Smells and Sounds]. Saint Petersburg: Evropeyskiy dom Publ., 2007. (In Russian).
  • Schafer R. M. The Soundscape: Our Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books, 1977. (In English).
  • Smith M. M. Listening to Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. (In English).
  • Thompson E. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. (In English).
[Top]