Archaeoastronomy

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the study of how peoples in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures."<ref>Sinclair 2006:13</ref> Clive Ruggles argues it specifically is not the study of ancient astronomy, as astronomy is a culturally specific concept and ancient peoples may have related to the sky in a different way.<ref>Ruggles 2005:19</ref> It is often twinned with ethnoastronomy, the anthropological study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy is also closely associated with historical astronomy, the use of historical records of heavenly events to answer astronomical problems and the history of astronomy, which uses written records to evaluate past astronomical traditions.

Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including astronomy, statistics and probability, anthropology, history as well as archaeology. Because these methods are so diverse and pull data from such different sources the problem of integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term issue for archaeoastronomers.<ref>Iwaniszewski 2003, 7-10</ref>

Archaeoastronomy fills complimentary niches to Landscape archaeology and Cognitive archaeology. One such example would the extensive work on Hopi skywatching. A combination of ethnoastronomical and archaeoastronomical studies has shown that phenomena in the sky can give different parts of the landscape different meanings. This connects use of the landscape with how people think about their place within it. The astronomical phenomena add a further element of seasonality, showing how the landscape is embedded in a sense of time. In turn this reveals more about how the Hopi make sense of other parts of their lives such as the use of colour symbolism, and their relationship with fauna.<ref>McCluskey 1977</ref><ref>McCluskey 1990</ref> Other examples which have brought together ideas of cognition and landscape include studies of the cosmic order embedded in the roads of settlements.<ref>Chiu & Morrison 1980</ref><ref>Magli 2008</ref>

Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods. The meanings of the sky vary from culture to culture, nevertheless there are scientific methods which can be applied across cultures when examining ancient beliefs.<ref>McCluskey 2005</ref>. It is perhaps the need to balance the social and scientific aspects of Archaeoastronomy which led Clive Ruggles to describe it as: "...[A] field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other." <ref>Carlson 1999</ref>

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History of archaeoastronomy

"In his short history of 'Astro-archaeology' John Michell argued that the status of research into ancient astronomy had improved over the past two centuries, going 'from lunacy to heresy to interesting notion and finally to the gates of orthodoxy.' Nearly two decades later, we can still ask the question: Is archaeoastronomy still waiting at the gates of orthodoxy or has it gotten inside the gates?" <ref>Bostwick 2006:13</ref> {{#if:{{{2|}}}|
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Two hundred years before Michell wrote the above, there were no archaeoastronomers and there were no professional archaeologists, but there were astronomers and antiquarians. Some of these are considered the precursors of archaeoastronomy, as antiquarians interpreted the astronomical orientation of the ruins that dotted the English countryside, as William Stukeley did of Stonehenge in 1740,<ref>Michell, 2001:9-10</ref> while John Aubrey in 1678<ref>Johnson, 1912:225</ref> and Henry Chauncy in 1700 sought similar astronomical principles underlying the orientation of churches.<ref>Hoskin, 2001:7</ref> Late in the nineteenth century astronomers such as Richard Proctor and Charles Piazzi Smyth investigated the astronomical orientations of the pyramids.<ref>Michell, 2001:17-18</ref>

The term archaeoastronomy was first used by Elizabeth Chesley Baity (at the suggestion of Euan MacKie) in 1973,<ref>Sinclair 2006:17</ref> but as a topic of study it may much older, depending on what you say is archaeoastronomy. Clive Ruggles<ref>Ruggles 2005:312-3</ref> says that Heinrich Nissen, working in the mid-nineteenth century was arguably the first archaeoastronomer. Rolf Sinclair<ref>Sinclair 2006:8</ref> says that Norman Lockyer, working around the late 19th and early 20th Centuries could be called the 'father of archaeoastronomy.' Euan MacKie<ref>Mackie 2006:243</ref> would place the origin even later, stating: "...the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Early archaeoastronomy began by surveying alignments of Megalithic stones in the British Isles and sites like Auglish in County Londonderry in an attempt to find statistical patterns

In the 1960s the work of the engineer Alexander Thom and that of the astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who proposed that Stonehenge was a Neolithic computer,<ref>Hawkins 1976</ref> inspired new interest in the astronomical features of ancient sites. The claims of Hawkins were largely dismissed, <ref>Atkinson 1966</ref> but this was not the case for Alexander Thom;s work, whose his survey results of megalithic sites also proposed widespread practice of accurate astronomy in the British Isles.<ref>Thom 1988:9-10</ref> Euan MacKie, recognised that Thom’s theories needed to be tested and he excavated at the Kintraw standing stone site in Argyllshire in 1970 and 1971 to check whether the latter’s prediction of an observation platform on the hill slope above the stone was correct. There was an artificial platform there and this apparent verification of Thom’s long alignment hypothesis (Kintraw was diagnosed as an accurate winter solstice site) led him to check Thom’s geometrical theories at the Cultoon stone circle in Islay, also with a positive result. MacKie therefore broadly accepted Thom’s conclusions and published new prehistories of Britain.<ref>MacKie 1977</ref> In contrast a re-evaluation of Thom’s fieldwork by Clive Ruggles argued that Thom's claims of high accuracy astronomy were not fully supported by the evidence.<ref>Gingerich 2000</ref> Nevertheless Thom's legacy remains strong, Krupp<ref>Krupp 1979:18</ref> wrote in 1979, "Almost singlehandedly he has established the standards for archaeo-astronomical fieldwork and interpretation, and his amazing results have stirred controversy during the last three decades." His influence endures and practice of statistical testing of data remains one of the methods of archaeoastronomy.<ref>Hicks 1993</ref><ref>Iwanisewzski 1995</ref>

It has been proposed that Maya sites such as Uxmal were built in accordance with astronomical alignments

The approach In the New World, where anthropologists began to more fully consider the role of astronomy in Amerindian societies, was markedly different. They had access to sources that the prehistory of Europe lacks such as ethnographies<ref>Zeilik 1985</ref><ref>Zeilik 1986</ref> and the historical records of the early colonizers. Following the pioneering example of Anthony Aveni,<ref>Milbraith 1999:8</ref><ref>Broda 2000:233</ref> this allowed New World archaeoastronomers to make claims for motives which in the Old World would have been mere speculation. The concentration on historical data led to some claims of high accuracy that were comparatively weak when compared to the statistically led investigations in Europe.<ref>Hoskin 1996</ref>

This came to a head at a meeting sponsored by the IAU in Oxford in 1981.<ref>Ruggles 1993:ix</ref> The methodologies and research questions of the participants were considered so different that the conference proceedings were published as two volumes.<ref>Aveni 1982</ref><ref>Heggie 1982</ref> Nevertheless the conference was considered a success in bringing researchers together and Oxford conferences have continued every four or five years at locations around the world. The subsequent conferences have resulted in a move to more interdisciplinary approaches with researchers aiming to combine the contextuality of archaeological research,<ref>Aveni, 1989a:xi–xiii</ref> which broadly describes the state of archaeoastronomy today. Rather than merely establishing the existence of ancient astronomies archaeoastronomers seek to explain why people would have an interest in the night sky.

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Archaeoastronomy and its relations to other disciplines

"...[O]ne of the the most endearing characteristics of archaeoastronomy is its capacity to set academics in different disciplines at loggerheads with each other." <ref>Ruggles 2000</ref> {{#if:{{{2|}}}|
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Reflecting Archaeoastronomy's development as an interdisciplinary subject, research in the field is conducted by investigators trained in a wide range of disciplines. Authors of recent doctoral dissertations have described their work as concerned with the fields of archaeology and cultural anthropology; with various fields of history including the history of specific regions and periods, the history of science and the history of religion; and with the relation of astronomy to art, literature and religion. Only rarely did they describe their work as astronomical, and then only as a secondary category.<ref>McCluskey 2004</ref>

Both practicing archaeoastronomers and observers of the discipline approach it from different perspectives. George Gummerman and Miranda Warburton view archaeoastronomy as part of an archaeology informed by cultural anthropology and aimed at understanding a "group’s conception of themselves in relation to the heavens', in a word, its cosmology.<ref>Gummerman & Warburton 2005</ref> Todd Bostwick argued that "archaeoastronomy is anthropology – the study of human behavior in the past and present."<ref>Bostwick 2006:3</ref> Paul Bahn has described archaeoastronomy as an area of cognitive archaeology.<ref>Bahn 1996:49</ref> Other researchers relate archaeoastronomy to the history of science, either as it relates to a culture's observations of nature and the conceptual framework they devised to impose an order on those observations<ref>McCluskey 2001</ref> or as it relates to the political motives which drove particular historical actors to deploy certain astronomical concepts or techniques.<ref>Broda 2006</ref><ref>Aldana 2007:14-15</ref> Art historian Richard Poss took a more flexible approach, maintaining that the astronomical rock art of the US Southwest be read employing "the hermeneutic traditions of western art history and art criticism"<ref>Poss 2005:97</ref> Astronomers, however, raise different questions, seeking to provide their students with identifiable precursors of their discipline, and are especially concerned with the important question of how to confirm that specific sites are, indeed, intentionally astronomical.<ref>Schaefer 2006:30</ref>

The reactions of professional archaeologists to archaeoastronomy have been decidedly mixed. Some expressed incomprehension or even hostility, varying from a rejection by the archaeological mainstream of what they saw as an archaeoastronomical fringe to an incomprehension between the cultural focus of archaeologists and the quantitative focus of early archaeoastronomers.<ref>Ruggles 1999: 3-9</ref> Yet archaeologists have increasingly come to incorporate many of the insights from archaeoastronomy into archaeology textbooks<ref>Fisher 2006</ref> and, as mentioned above, some students wrote archaeology dissertations on archaeoastronomical topics.

Since archaeoastronomers disagree so widely on the characterisation of the discipline, they even dispute its name. All three major international scholarly associations relate archaeoastronomy to the study of culture, using the term Astronomy in Culture or a translation. Michael Hoskin sees an important part of the discipline as fact-collecting, rather than theorizing, and proposed to label this aspect of the discipline Archaeotopography.<ref>Hoskin 2001:13-14.</ref> Ruggles and Saunders proposed Cultural Astronomy as a unifying term for the various methods of studying folk astronomies.<ref>Ruggles & Saunders 1993:1-31</ref> Others have argued that astronomy is an inaccurate term, what are being studied are cosmologies and people who object to the use of logos have suggested adopting the Spanish cosmovisión.<ref> Ruggles 2005:115-117</ref>

When debates polarise between techniques, the methods are often referred to by a colour code, based on the colours of the bindings of the two volumes from the first Oxford Conference, where the approaches were first distinguished.<ref>Aveni 1986</ref> Green (Old World) archaeoastronomers rely heavily on statistics and are sometimes accused of missing the cultural context of what is a social practice. Brown (New World) archaeoastronomers in contrast have abundant ethnographic and historical evidence and have been described as 'cavalier' on matters of measurement and statistical analysis.<ref>Hoskin 2001:2</ref> Finding a way to integrate various approaches has been a subject of much discussion since the early 1990s.<ref>Ruggles & Saunders. 1993</ref><ref>Iwanisewzski 2001</ref>

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Methodology

"For a long time I have believed that such diversity requires the invention of some all-embracing theory. I think I was very naïve in thinking that such a thing was ever possible." <ref>Iwaniszewski 2003:7</ref> {{#if:{{{2|}}}|
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Because of the wide variety of evidence, which can include artifacts as well as sites, there is no one way to practice archaeoastronomy.<ref> Iwaniszewski 2003</ref> Despite this it is accepted that Archaeoastronomy is not a discipline that sits in isolation. Because Archaeoastronomy is an interdisciplinary field, whatever is being investigated should make sense both archaeologically and astronomically. Studies are more likely to be considered sound if they use theoretical tools found in Archaeology like analogy and homology and if they can demonstrate an understanding of accuracy and precision found in Astronomy.

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Artifactual analysis

The Antikythera mechanism (main fragment)

In the case of artifacts such as the Sky Disc of Nebra, alleged to be a Bronze Age artifact depicting the cosmos,<ref>Scholsser 2002</ref><ref>Meller 2004</ref> the analysis would be similar to typical post-excavation analysis as used in other sub-disciplines in archaeology. An artifact is examined and attempts are made to draw analogies with historical or ethnographical records of other peoples. The more parallels that can be found, the more likely an explanation is to be accepted by other archaeologists.

Another well-known artifact with an astronomical use is the Antikythera mechanism. In this case analysis of the artifact, and reference to the description of similar devices described by Cicero, would indicate a plausible use for the device. The argument is bolstered by the presence of symbols on the mechanism, allowing the disc to be read.<ref>T. Freeth et al. 2006</ref>

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Symbolic analysis

Image:Fajadadiagram.JPG In some cases the use of an artefact may be known, but its meaning may not be fully understood. In such cases an examination of the symbolism on the artefact may be necessary.

A mundane example is the presence of astrological symbols found on some shoes and sandals from the Roman Empire. The use of shoes and sandals is well known, but Carol van Driel-Murray has proposed that astrological symbols etched onto sandals gave the footwear spiritual or medicinal meanings.<ref>van Driel-Murray 2002</ref> This is supported through citation of other known uses of astrological symbols and their connection to medical practice and with the historical records of the time.

More problematic are those cases where the movement of the Sun at different times and seasons causes light and shadow interactions with petroglyphs. A widely known example is the Sun Dagger of Fajada Butte at which a glint of sunlight passing over a spiral petroglyph.<ref>Sofaer 2008</ref> The location of the dagger on the petroglyph varies throughout the year. At the solstices a dagger can be seen either through the heart of the spiral or to either side of it. It is proposed that this petroglyph was created to mark these events. Recent studies have identified many similar sites in the US Southwest and Northwestern Mexico.<ref>Fountain 2005</ref><ref>Robins & Ewing 1989</ref> It has been argued that the number of solstitial markers at these sites provides statistical evidence that they were intended to mark the solstices.<ref>Preston & Preston 2005: 115-118</ref> If no ethnographic nor historical data are found which can support this assertion then acceptance of the idea relies upon whether or not there are enough petroglyph sites in North America that such a correlation could occur by chance. It is helpful when petroglyphs are associated with existing peoples. This allows ethnoastronomers to question informants as to the meaning of such symbols.

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Alignment analysis

Image:Sun behind the Heel Stone.jpg One aspect of archaeoastronomy is alignment analysis, the study of the orientation of constructs and structures and calculation of the relation of the direction in which they faced with astronomical events. Stonehenge's Avenue is hypothesized to have an orientation to the summer solstice sunrise. In pyramids of Egypt are oriented in the cardinal directions.<ref>Spence 2000</ref>

Alignment analysis may vary depending upon the researcher. As a coarse stereotype archaeoastronomers from an historical background tend to have an idea which is then tested by examining structures for alignments. Astronomically-minded archaeoastronomers may analyze large numbers of sites and attempt to find statistical patterns. This approach was employed in papers by pioneers in the field.<ref>Sinclair 2006:16-17</ref> Alexander Thom conducted extensive survey work of megalithic stone circles and concluded many sites were situated to observe the moon. In this instance the aim was to prove that there is an astronomical problem which requires an historical explanation. This latter approach continues to an extent in some modern research but it has comparatively little direct impact on mainstream archaeology. Prof. Clive Ruggles has referred to this as "...a bewildering ignorance of the archaeoastronomical literature since 1980"<ref>Ruggles 1999:144</ref>

One reason the statistically-led approach has proven unpopular with archaeologists and anthropologists was stated by the anthropologist Keith Kintigh:

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Recently archaeoastronomers have argued for closer ties between statistically led research and historical or ethnographic records to place the findings in a social context. Schafer states: "a word of ethnography is worth a thousand alignments."<ref>Schaefer 2006:29</ref>

An alignment is calculated by measuring the azimuth, the angle from north, of the structure and the altitude of the horizon it faces<ref>Ruggles, 2005:112-113</ref> The azimuth is usually measured using a theodolite or a compass. A compass is easier to use, though the deviation of the Earth’s magnetic field from true north, known as its magnetic declination must be taken into account. Compasses are also unreliable in areas prone to magnetic interference, such as sites being supported by scaffolding. Additionally a compass can only measure the azimuth to a precision of a half a degree.<ref>{{

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A theodolite can be considerably more accurate if used correctly, but it is also considerably more difficult to use correctly. There is no inherent way to align a theodolite with North and so the scale has to be calibrated using astronomical observation, usually the position of the Sun.<ref>Ruggles 2005:423-425</ref> Because the position of celestial bodies changes with the time of day due to the Earth’s rotation, the time of these calibration observations must be accurately known, or else there will be a systematic error in the measurements. Horizon altitudes can be measured with a theodolite or a clinometer.

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Recreating the ancient sky

"...[A]lthough different ways to do science and different scientific results do arise in different cultures, this provides little support for those who would use such differences to question the sciences' ability to provide reliable statements about the world in which we live." <ref>McCluskey 2005:78</ref> {{#if:{{{2|}}}|
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Once the researcher has data to test, it is often necessary to attempt to recreate ancient sky conditions to place the data in its historical environment.

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Declination

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Image:Star trails over mountain.jpgTo calculate what astronomical features a structure faced a coordinate system is needed. The stars provide such a system. If you were to go outside on a clear night you would observe the stars spinning around the celestial pole. This point is +90° if you are watching the North Celestial Pole or −90° if you are observing the Southern Celestial Pole.<ref>Ruggles 1999:18</ref> The concentric circles the stars trace out are lines of celestial latitude, known as declination. The arc connecting the points on the horizon due East and due West (if the horizon is flat) and all points midway between the Celestial Poles is the Celestial Equator which has a declination of 0°. The visible declinations vary depending where you are on the globe. Only an observer on the North Pole of Earth would be unable to see any stars from the Southern Celestial Hemisphere at night (see diagram below). Once a declination has been found for the point on the horizon that a building faces it is then possible to say if a specific body can be seen in that direction.

Image:Decdiag600.jpg

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Solar positioning

While the stars are fixed to their declinations the Sun is not. The rising point of the Sun varies throughout the year. It swings between two limits marked by the solstices a bit like a pendulum, slowing as it reaches the extremes, but passing rapidly through the mid-point. If an archaeoastronomer can calculate from the azimuth and horizon height that a site was built to view a declination of +23.5° then he need not wait until June 21 to confirm the site does indeed face the summer solstice.<ref>A.F. Aveni 1997:23-27</ref> For more information see History of solar observation.

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Lunar positioning

The Moon’s appearance is considerably more complex. Its motion, like the Sun, is between two limits — known as lunastices rather than solstices. However, its travel between lunastices is considerably faster. It takes a sidereal month to complete its cycle rather than the year long trek of the Sun. This is further complicated as the lunastices marking the limits of the Moon’s movement move on an 18.6 year cycle. For slightly over nine years the extreme limits of the moon are outside the range of sunrise. For the remaining half of the cycle the Moon never exceeds the limits of the range of sunrise. However, much lunar observation was concerned with the phase of the Moon. The cycle from one New Moon to the next runs on an entirely different cycle, the Synodic month.<ref>Ruggles 1999:36-37</ref> Thus when examining sites for lunar significance the data can appear sparse due the extremely variable nature of the moon. See Moon for more details.

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Stellar positioning

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Image:Earth precession.jpgFinally there is often a need to correct for the apparent movement of the stars. On the timescale of human civilisation the stars have maintained the same position relative to each other. Each night they appear to rotate around the celestial poles due to the Earth’s rotation about its axis. However, the Earth spins rather like a spinning top. Not only does the Earth rotate, it wobbles. The Earth’s axis takes around 25,800 years to complete one full wobble.<ref>Ruggles 2005:345-347</ref> The effect to the archaeoastronomer is that stars did not rise over the horizon in the past in the same places as they do today. Nor did the stars rotate around Polaris as they do now. In the case of the Egyptian pyramids, it has been shown they were aligned towards Thuban, a faint star in the constellation of Draco.<ref>Ruggles 2005:354-355</ref> The effect can be substanstial over relatively short lengths of time, historically speaking. For instance a person born on December 25 in Roman times would have been born under the astrological sign of Capricorn. In the modern period a person born on the same date is now a Sagittarian<ref>{{

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Transient phenomena

Image:Tapestry of bayeux10.jpgAdditionally there are often transient phenomena, events which do not happen on an annual cycle. Most predictable are events like eclipses. In the case of solar eclipses these can be used to date events in the past. A solar eclipse mentioned by Herodotus enables us to date a battle between the Medes and the Lydians, which following the eclipse failed to happen, to May 28, 585 BC.<ref>{{

}}.{{ #if: {{{quote|}}} | “{{{quote}}}” }} </ref> Other easily calculated events are supernovae whose remains are visible to astronomers and therefore their positions and magnitude can be accurately calculated.

Some comets are predictable, most famously Halley’s Comet. Yet as a class of object they remain unpredictable and can appear at any time. Some have extremely lengthy orbital periods which means their past appearances and returns cannot be predicted. Others may have only ever passed through the solar system once and so are inherently unpredictable.<ref>Predicting the next bright comet, Space.com.</ref>

Meteor showers should be predictable, but the meteors are cometary debris and so require calculations of orbits which are currently impossible to complete.<ref>Steel 1999</ref> Other events noted by ancients include aurorae, sun dogs and rainbows all of which are as impossible to predict as the ancient weather, but nevertheless may have been considered important phenomena.

Major topics of archaeoastronomical research

The use of calendars

An example of a non-agricultural calendar is the Tzolk'in calendar of the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, which is a cycle of 260 days. This count is based on an earlier calendar and is found throughout Mesoamerica. This formed part of a more comprehensive system of Maya calendars which combined a series of astronomical observations and ritual cycles.<ref>Aveni 1989b</ref>

Other peculiar calendars include ancient Greek calendars. These were nominally lunar, starting with the New Moon. In reality the calendar could pause or skip days with confused citizens inscribing dates by both the civic calendar and ton theoi, by the moon.<ref>McCluskey 2000</ref> The lack of any universal calendar for ancient Greece suggests that coordination of panhellenic events such as games or rituals could be difficult and that astronomical symbolism may have been used as a politically neutral form of timekeeping.<ref>Salt & Boutsikas 2005</ref>

Myth and cosmology

Image:Argo Navis Hevelius.jpgAnother motive for studying the sky is to understand and explain the universe. In these cultures myth was a tool for achieving this and the explanations, while not reflecting the standards of modern science, are cosmologies.

The Incas arranged their empire to demonstrate their cosmology. The capital, Cusco, was at the centre of the empire and connected to it by means of ceques, conceptually straight lines radiating out from the centre.<ref>Bauer & Dearborn 1995</ref> These ceques connected the centre of the empire to the four suyus, which were regions defined by their direction from Cusco. The notion of a quartered cosmos is common across the Andes. Gary Urton, who has conducted fieldwork in the Andean villagers of Misminay, has connected this quartering with the appearance of the Milky Way in the night sky.<ref>Urton 1981</ref> In one season it will bisect the sky and in another bisect it in a perpendicular fashion.

The importance of observing cosmological factors is also seen on the other side of the world. The Forbidden City in Beijing is laid out to follow cosmic order though rather than observing four directions the Chinese saw five, North, South, East, West and Centre. The Forbidden City occupied the centre of ancient Beijing.<ref>Krupp 1997a:196–9</ref> One approaches the Emperor from the south, thus placing him in front of the circumpolar stars. This creates the situation of the heavens revolving around the person of the Emperor. The Chinese cosmology is now better known through its export as Feng Shui.

There is also much information about how the universe was thought to work stored in the mythology of the constellations. The Barasana of the Amazon plan part of their annual cycle based on observation of the stars. When their constellation of the Caterpillar-Jaguar falls they prepare to catch the pupating caterpillars of the forest as they fall from the trees.<ref>Hoskin 1999:15–6</ref> This provides planning for food procurement at a time when hunger otherwise could be a problem.

A more well-known source of constellation myth are the texts of the Greeks and Romans. The origin of their constellations remains a matter of continuing and occasionally fractious debate.

Displays of power

By including celestial motifs in clothing it becomes possible for the wearer to make claims the power on Earth is drawn from above. It has been said that the Shield of Achilles described by Homer is also a catalogue of constellations.<ref>Hannah 1994</ref> In North America shields depicted in Comanche petroglyphs appear to include Venus symbolism.<ref>Krupp 1997a:252–3</ref>

Solsticial alignments also can be seen as displays of power. When viewed from a ceremonial plaza on the Island of the Sun (the mythical origin place of the Sun) in Lake Titicaca, the Sun was seen to rise at the June solstice between two towers on a nearby ridge. The sacred part of the island was separated from the remainder of it by a stone wall and ethnographic records indicate that access to the sacred space was restricted to members of the Inca ruling elite. Ordinary pilgrims stood on a platform outside the ceremonial area to see the solstice Sun rise between the towers.<ref>Dearborn, Seddon & Bauer, 1998</ref>

In Egypt the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak has been the subject of much study. Evaluation of the site, taking into account the change over time of the obliquity of the ecliptic show that the Great Temple was aligned on the rising of the midwinter sun.<ref>Krupp 1988</ref> The length of the corridor down which sunlight would travel would have limited illumination at other times of the year.

In a later period the Serapeum in Alexandria was also said to have contained a solar alignment so that, on a specific sunrise, a shaft of light would pass across the lips of the statue of Serapis thus symbolising the Sun saluting the god.<ref>Rufinus</ref>

Archaeoastronomy

From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)

Contents

History of archaeoastronomy

Archaeoastronomy and its relations to other disciplines

Methodology

Artifactual analysis

Symbolic analysis

Alignment analysis

Recreating the ancient sky

Declination

Solar positioning

Lunar positioning

Stellar positioning

Transient phenomena

Major topics of archaeoastronomical research

The use of calendars

Myth and cosmology

Displays of power

Major sites of archaeoastronomical interest

Newgrange

The Pyramids of Giza

El Castillo

Stonehenge

Uxmal

Fringe Archaeoastronomy

Archaeoastronomical organisations and publications

Notes

References

See also

External links

Societies

Journals

Views

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