We humans have always been fascinated with the night skies and the movements of celestial bodies. Observation and interpretation of happenings in the sky are deeply entwined in every culture – legends and myths worldwide are full of references to the stars, the sun, the moon… And this fascination is expressed not only in our literature but in the landscape too, in the many ancient monuments that demonstrate simpler methods of astronomical observation.
In our modern times, when astronomers have highly developed technology at their command, it can be easy to overlook the vital relationship between ourselves and our immediate surroundings. Connection with the night sky especially is becoming less and less a part of our regular lives, especially for those of us who live in street-lit areas. Perhaps this accounts for the growing interest in the topic of Archaeoastronomy, a multi-disciplinary field that studies the way that cultures interpret events in the sky by looking at links between astronomy, archaeology and landscape.
I grew up in Wiltshire, a part of England where mysterious ancient standing stones, stone circles and earth mounds in the middle of a modern landscape of ploughed fields formed an intriguing backdrop to my childhood. Seeking to find out more about the relationship between such monuments and astronomy, I recently spoke with Archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett who is based in Cornwall, a region similarly blessed with many ancient sites, from the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods.
Carolyn has studied a number of sites in Cornwall, focussing in particular on the way in which monuments are often aligned with significant celestial events, such as sunrise and sunset at the winter and summer solstices, or lunar events. For example, one of her projects involved a study of the Boscawen-Un stone circle, which is unusual in having a central stone.
After making a survey of potential target points on the horizon and checking for potential matches with significant events in the sky, she discovered that the site is aligned such that at the winter solstice the rising sun appears at the only point on the horizon where the sea is visible.
And even more interestingly, she made a connection with a similar site just a couple of miles away where the setting winter solstice sun is visible over the sea through a similar gap on the horizon, prompting speculation that perhaps the ancient people used to make a procession between the two sites on solstice day to observe both events. A similar processional route has been proposed at Stonehenge.
A lot of alignment work can be carried out using computer programs based on satellite imagery but Carolyn believes that this is no substitute for studies in the field, as that is the only way to experience how the landscape functions as a whole. In addition, her measurements have shown that there is a small margin of error between program-based and field-based measurements.
Alignment is only one aspect of archaeoastronomy, however. For example, Carolyn has recently written an article about the use by ancient civilisations of iron from meteorites, during periods when they would otherwise have no access to iron. She discusses this beautiful 3500 year-old (Early Bronze Age) dagger from the Hittite city of Alaca Höyük in what is now central Turkey, as a wonderful example.
Reconnection Apart from the intrinsic historical appeal of Archaeoastronomy, Carolyn sees that it has great value a way of involving people in astronomy at grass-roots level. She runs regular tours of her local sites for visitors and feels it’s a great way of enabling people to reconnect with the landscape and the night sky, to experience the wonderful dark skies of West Cornwall, and to trigger a deeper interest and appreciation of the solar and lunar cycles and astronomy in general. Credit: Carolyn Kennett is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and Bulletin co-editor of the UK-based Society for the History of Astronomy. The whole of this article is based on a recent conversation with her – many thanks Carolyn! Find out more: http://www.historic-cornwall.org.uk/a2m/index.htm - Cornwall’s archaeological heritage Image Credits:
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