If you build it, they will strum

I often moan about the ahistorical nature of the web, with its limited archival capacity and rush to adopt new technologies. But then there are stories like this:

Using data from various sources, including images in artwork, fragments from excavations and written descriptions, researchers of the Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application, or ASTRA, project succeeded in developing a 3D mechanical computer model of the [epigonion].

Wow, ancient instruments! (Apparently, the instrument is a lot like a harp.) Hear what our ancestors heard! OK, those of us with ancestors in medieval Europe at least.

In the near future, the researchers hope to perform a concert on instruments that have not been heard for more than 2,000 years.

It's charming to think that through compiling bits of information from a variety of sources, the good folks at ASTRA can recreate objects without any blueprint. I do wonder why they've focused their energies on the epigonion; surely there are lots of forgotten instruments. Though perhaps they're starting out small and building up:

Vicinanza and colleagues ...resurrected the monochord, an instrument played by Pythagoras... Meaning "one string," the monochord had a single string fixed at both ends and stretched over a sound box.