Archaeomusicology helps to trace the evolution of musical instruments on basis of their finds recovered during archaeological fieldwork. To date contributions of Polish archaeomusicologists number over eighty publications. The present article focuses on a number of published duct aerophones discovered in Poland, ie one of a group of instruments in which notes are produced by a the vibration of a column of air inside a hollow pipe (Fig. 1). Duct (or flute) aerophones are distinguished into end-blown – the note is created by the friction of air blown into the pipe against the sharp edge of the instrument (a) – and lip-blown – in which the edge of the blowing hole is situated in the mouth hole, the air is blown through a duct between the inner wall of the pipe and a plug set inside the blowing hole (b). Wind instruments may be tubular or vessel-like in form and be used for emitting isolated notes (ie be one-note musical tools) or for sounding basic melodies, in which case they are referred to as musical instruments. Finds of prehistoric end-blown tubular instruments are known in Poland from Janikowo (I), Pobiel and Przeczyce (Fig. 3); end blown vessel instruments were recorded at Jaskinia Mamutowa (Mammoth Cave; Fig. 2), Komorowo and Wrocław-Żerniki. The lower end of these instruments was open (specimen from Janikowo I) or closed (Przeczyce). All of them are of prehistoric date, and span the period from the Late Palaeolithic (Jaskinia Mamutowa) until Przeworsk culture of the Late PreRoman Period (Janikowo) and Late Roman Period (Wrocław-Żerniki). The only lip-blown prehistoric aerophone known to date comes from Janikowo, all the others were recovered from medieval contexts, eg the recorder from Elbląg (III) (Fig. 6:2). A permanently closed lower end is seen in whistles from Janikowo (II) and Piekło (“natural” closure; Fig. 4:3) and Poznań (deliberate; Fig. 4:2). In other instruments the lower end was open. The aerophones in question tended to be unipartite. Only the instrument from Przeczyce consists of several pipes. Differences in pitch which depends from the length of the pipe (the longer the pipe, the lower the pitch) were achieved by changing the height of the air column; this was done by eg stopping the finger-holes (between 2 and 7) in the body of the instrument or by playing the notes on pipes of different length, as in the pan flute from Przeczyce. The latter is the only true prehistoric musical instrument known from Poland. Most of the known aerophones have no finger-holes and can emit no more than one or two different notes. Presumably, they were used as musical tools for signalling. The aerophones of interest were played with one (up to three upper holes) or two hands. By the Middle Ages, musicians had mastered the art of playing simultaneously a pipe and tabor (Opole – so-called Schwegel group). The construction of duct aerophones, whether end-blown or lip-blown, has continued to be very much the same starting from the prehistoric age, through the medieval period, even as far as the modern age.