Compiled in honor of Anthony F. Aveni, America's leading archaeoastronomer, Skywatching in the Ancient World offers state-of-the-art work in cultural astronomy by well-known experts in Mayan glyphic ...studies, cultural history, ethnohistory, and the history of science and of religions. This collection's wide range of outstanding scholarship reveals that cultural astronomy has come into its own. The diverse topics addressed by the contributors include the correlation between Colonial Northern Zapotec and Gregorian calendars, the period of use of the Dresden Codex Venus table and the significance of the Lunar Almanacs that precede it, a new interpretation of an Inka tapestry mantle as a commemorative calendar, temple orientations in Hawai'i and church orientations in Medieval England, and the connection in cultural imagery between astronomers (science) and wizards (magic).Contributors include: Harvey M. Bricker, Victoria R. Bricker, Edward E. Calnek, Clemency Coggins, John Justeson, Edwin C. Krupp, Stephen C. McCluskey, Susan Milbrath, Clive Ruggles, David Tavrez, Barbara Tedlock, Dennis Tedlock, Gary Urton, and R. Tom Zuidema. Mesoamerican Worlds Series
We present the results of an analysis of the precise spatial orientation of colonial Christian churches located in the Canary Island of Fuerteventura (Spain). Our sample consists of 48 churches, most ...built during the period between the Castilian conquest led by the Norman Jean de Béthencourt in the early fifteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. While most of the religious constructions in the sample have their main axes oriented within the solar range, in accordance with tradition, the statistical analysis also reveals the presence of two groups of churches that diverge from due east. For the first group, mainly composed of churches located in the central part of the island, an anomalous tendency of orientation towards a declination of c. ?14° was detected. We provide four possible explanations for this: (1) orientation to coincide with sunrise on the date of a traditional Canarian celebration; (2) the influence of topography; (3) sunset orientations; and (4), more controversially, a “bright star” orientation close to the declination of Sirius during the seventeenth century, drawing on ethnographic data. For the second group, meanwhile, we find a pattern of orientation slightly to the north of due east. We propose this might signal orientation to the rising Sun on dates close to Easter Sunday.
An Archaeology of the Sky in Gaul in the Augustan Period García Quintela, Marco V; González-García, A César; Espinosa-Espinosa, David ...
Journal of skyscape archaeology (Online),
02/2023, Volume:
8, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Ancient Gaul was transformed during the reign of Augustus (r. 31 BC–14 AD) through a major programme of city building. The new Roman cities were constructed according to topographic, health and ...ritual considerations, and we hypothesise that their orientations also reflect distinct celestial conceptions held by the Gauls and by the Roman emperor Augustus. Our study of the orientation of 60 cities verifies the existence of coherent patterns, and distinguishes two dominant schemes: a pattern prevailing in the south and focused on cardinal orientations, possibly related to the dies natalis of Augustus; and a pattern dominant in the north, focused on the dates of the festivities at the beginning of the seasons from the Celtic tradition. We argue that the orientation of the cities was used by the Gallic elites to express the validity of their cultural tradition when they became a part of the Roman Empire.
Simulated Sky Zotti, Georg; Hoffmann, Susanne M.; Wolf, Alexander ...
Journal of skyscape archaeology (Online),
03/2021, Volume:
6, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables. The immersive sky simulator ...of the twentieth century, the optomechanical planetarium, provided new ways for representing and teaching about the sky, but the high construction and running costs meant that they have not become common. However, in recent decades, “desktop planetarium programs” running on personal computers have gained wide attention. Modern incarnations are immensely versatile tools, mostly targeted towards the community of amateur astronomers and for knowledge transfer in transdisciplinary research. Cultural astronomers also value the possibilities they give of simulating the skies of past times or other cultures. With this paper, we provide an extended presentation of the open-source project Stellarium, which in the last few years has been enriched with capabilities for cultural astronomy research not found in similar, commercial alternatives.
The Gumugou Cemetery is an early Bronze Age necropolis located in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, China. Among its notable features is the consistent alignment of corpses with the head or long axis of ...the graves oriented towards the east. While previous research has suggested a connection between the orientation of burials at Gumugou and the sun, a comprehensive investigation of this perspective is still lacking. This research paper presents a comprehensive analysis and corresponding findings on the burial orientation at Gumugou from an archaeo-astronomical perspective. The results indicate a significant correlation between the burial orientations at the Gumugou Cemetery and the position of sunrise on the horizon. Moreover, further analysis reveals that the interments of Gumugou were probably built around the Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox.
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