Помоги проекту - поделись книгой:
Archaeoastronomy; Cosmology; Orientation.
References and further reading
Belmonte, Juan, and Michael Hoskin.
Equipo Sirius, 2002. [In Spanish.]
Hoskin, Michael.
Regis, UK: Ocarina Books, 2001.
This confusing term has sometimes been used as an alternative to
See also:
Archaeoastronomy.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F.
Ruggles, Clive.
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
To a modern astronomer, astrology is anathema. The idea that there can be any direct connection between the configuration or appearance of distant heavenly bodies in the sky and current or future events in the terrestrial world flies in the face of laws of physics that have been established beyond question over many centuries. This is not to deny that in a few cases an astrological relationship might actually have a physical basis: some claim, for example, that a correlation can exist between the growth of plants and the phase of the moon, because the level of moisture in the soil is related to the lunar phase through a tidal effect.
From the perspective of the archaeologist or anthropologist, whose ultimate interest is in human behavior rather than the laws of the universe, whether such an argument is scientifically verifiable or not is not the point. What interests these scientists is the fact that people throughout the ages have drawn direct connections between the appearance of the sky and events on earth, and that this forms an integral part of their understanding of how the world works. Even in the modern Western world, popular astrology represents a widespread perception of how celestial events influence terrestrial ones and challenges the “institutional” view represented by scientific astronomy. Modern astronomers may dismiss astrology as nonsense, but the direct associations it presupposes between celestial and terrestrial events may well be far closer to the ways people throughout history have managed to make sense of the world than the explanations provided by modern science.
Outside the Western scientific tradition there is no meaningful distinction between astronomy and astrology; indeed, archaeoastronomy might equally well be named archaeoastrology. Modern indigenous worldviews (cosmologies) commonly feature the idea that good fortune on earth depends upon keeping human action in harmony with what is happening in the skies, and there is every reason to assume that this has been true since early prehistory.
The term
The belief that what is seen in the sky may foreshadow the future—typically stemming, as for the ancient Greeks, from a belief that it can indicate the intentions of the gods—underlies celestial divination: the use of observations of sky phenomena to predict future earthly events. Such a belief is very widespread in human history. Unique, unexpected, and imposing events such as solar and lunar eclipses were widely seen as portents of disaster. But more regular celestial events also indicated auspicious or inauspicious times for planting crops, having children, going to war, and so on. In city-state or empire, astronomers and astrologers were employed to identify good and bad omens for the benefit of their nations and their rulers. This happened in ancient Babylonia, China, Greece, and Rome, as well as in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Observation was followed by prognosis (interpretation) and then by action (prescription). A good example of celestial divination is found in the early Chinese artifacts known as
Predictability did not necessarily detract from the divinatory power of a celestial event. The motions of the five visible planets are regular and predictable, though quite complex. Planetary astrology, which can assign divinatory significance to the cycles of appearance of particular planets as well as to their positions with respect to the background stars and constellations and even to one another, extends back to Babylonian times. The Maya went to extraordinary lengths to reduce the workings of the cosmos to a series of interacting regular cycles. The Dresden Codex—a surviving almanac containing tabulations of the cycles of appearance of the moon, Venus and possibly Mars, and even of lunar eclipses—seems to have been an attempt to make the various motions of the heavenly bodies predictable. In doing so, the Maya reached a remarkable level of mathematical sophistication, yet their ultimate motive seems to have remained divinatory. For the ancient Chinese, on the other hand, predicting celestial events through systematic observations and recording fell within the domain of calendrics. This discipline acted almost independently of, and in some senses in competition with, astrology. Here, once lunar eclipses began to become predictable around the year 0, they lost their divinatory significance.
The idea that people’s lives can be permanently influenced by the celestial—and particularly the planetary—configurations at the moment of their birth is one of the defining characteristics of modern astrology, and also one that modern scientists find particularly indigestible. (It should be said that planetary birth charts go far beyond, and are considerably more complex than, the popular perception of horoscopes based solely upon the sun’s position within the zodiac at birth [“birth sign”].) Planetary birth charts have their origins in ancient Babylonia and reached an apex in Greece and Rome. When astrologers began to generate horoscopes, this fundamentally altered their role. Instead of observing the skies and waiting for calamitous astronomical events, they were now required to work out planetary configurations at specified moments in the past, something that demanded considerable technical skill. Given the particularity of the idea of the planetary birth chart as against the myriad ways one might envision the influence of the celestial bodies on human lives, it is surprising that the practice has proved so persistent.
Insofar as it maintains that a person’s destiny is determined or influenced by the configuration of the heavens at the time of their birth, horoscopic astrology is actually a form of divination. It also introduces awkward issues about free wilname = "note" if one’s fate is already sealed, there seems little point in trying to alter it. However, variants are evident in modern folklore that largely overcome this problem. Thus in the Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia, well into the twentieth century, it was commonly believed among rural communities that the phase of the moon at birth influenced various aspects of a person’s character—their propensity to strength or timidity, cleverness, long life, a joyful or gloomy disposition, and so on. But such characteristics could be modified throughout life by choosing, for example, the correct phase of the moon for weaning, baptism, marriage, or building a house.
The most fundamental connection between objects and events in the sky and those on earth that we might term
See also:
Archaeoastronomy; Cosmology; Lunar Eclipses; Science or Symbolism?; Solar Eclipses.
Babylonian Astronomy and Astrology; Barasana “Caterpillar Jaguar” Constellation; Chinese Astronomy; Dresden Codex; Hawaiian Calendar; Mesoamerican Calendar Round; Mursi Calendar; Roman Astronomy and Astrology; Star of Bethlehem.
Inferior Planets, Motions of; Superior Planets, Motions of.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F.
Kasak, Enn. “Ancient Astrology as a Common Root for Science and Pseudo-Science.”
Ruggles, Clive, Frank Prendergast, and Tom Ray, eds.
Is it possible to date an archaeological site by astronomical means? In theory, the answer is yes, for if we can identify an alignment and the intended astronomical target, measure where the alignment points, and then use modern astronomy to calculate where that event occurred at different times in the past, then we can fit the best date to the alignment. Stellar alignments would seem to be most promising, because the rising and setting positions of most stars change significantly over the centuries owing to precession. The rising and setting position of the sun at the solstices and the moon at the standstill limits also alter with time, although by much less, owing to the slow change in the obliquity of the ecliptic.
In practice, however, astronomical dating is rife with pitfalls. The main one is that we rarely have reliable (e.g., historical) evidence to tell us either that a particular alignment was actually deliberate, or what is was aligned upon in the first place. Where we do have historical evidence, we are likely to know the date fairly accurately already. (A case where we do have some historical evidence, but not as much as we might like, and the alignment does tell us something, is the Venus alignment of the Governor’s Palace at the Maya city of Uxmal.)
More often, we are dealing with prehistoric structures where we have no evidence other than the alignments themselves. If we find an alignment that we suspect to be stellar, we can try different stars and different dates to see if any combination fits particularly well. The problem here is that if, say, we are willing to consider the fifteen brightest stars and a five-hundred-year date range, then there is approximately a one-in-three chance that we will be able to find a star and a date to fit
Yet despite these problems, there have been cases where postulated stellar alignments can help in the process of dating a site. One relates to the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt and another to a perplexing later prehistoric sanctuary in Mallorca, Son Mas.
Solar and lunar alignments don’t suffer from these problems but have others of their own, mainly that the change over time is very small. The change in the declination of the solstitial sun, for example, amounts to only about one arc minute per century. This means that only if we have good reason to suspect that a solstitial alignment had very high precision, such as that envisaged by Alexander Thom at British megalithic sites, can such an alignment be used to indicate a date accurate to within a few centuries. Even then, variations in refraction may provide an insurmountable obstacle.
See also:
Methodology; Thom, Alexander (1894–1985).
Ballochroy; Governor’s Palace at Uxmal; Pyramids of Giza; Son Mas.
Declination; Extinction; Moon, Motions of; Obliquity of the Ecliptic;
Precession; Refraction; Solstices; Star Rising and Setting Positions.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F.
2001.
Belmonte, Juan, and Michael Hoskin.
Madrid: Equipo Sirius, 2002. [In Spanish.]
Hoskin, Michael.
Regis, UK: Ocarina Books, 2001.
Ruggles, Clive.
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Situated in Wiltshire, England, a few kilometers south of the modern town of Swindon, Avebury is one of the largest and most impressive Later Neolithic henge monuments in Britain. Built around the middle of the third millennium B.C.E., it measures some 350 meters (1,150 feet) across and surrounds an entire modern village. The outer ditch and bank, when first constructed, were some 9 meters (30 feet) deep and 8 meters (25 feet) high, respectively, and it is estimated that almost a hundred stones encircled the interior. There were also two inner circles, each around 100 meters (300 feet) in diameter. At the center of the northernmost of these was a configuration of three massive stones arranged like three of the four sides of a huge rectangular box, known as the Cove. Running away from two of the four entrances of the henge, to the west and south, were two long stone avenues. Much of the first 800 meters (half mile) of the latter (the Kennet Avenue) survives, but it originally ran for over 2.3 kilometers (1.5 miles), connecting Avebury to a site whose construction had commenced many centuries earlier: a set of concentric timber circles (possibly a roofed building) later replaced by two circles of small stones, known as the Sanctuary.
Surprisingly, given the obvious importance of the monumental landscape in and around Avebury in Later Neolithic times, few astronomical alignments have ever been claimed here. Alexander Thom’s only interest in the site was geometrical. The British archaeologist Aubrey Burl has suggested that the Cove was aligned upon the most northerly rising position of the moon, but the few other known examples of coves show no astronomical consistency.
Thom, Alexander (1894–1985). Circles of Earth, Timber, and Stone; Hopewell Mounds.
References and further reading
Burl, Aubrey.
Mount Pleasant, SC: Tempus, 2002. Ruggles, Clive.
Axial stone circles (ASCs), or more correctly axial-stone circles, are a distinctive type of stone circle found only in the southwestern corner of Ireland, in counties Cork and Kerry. Only one other regional group of stone circles bears any resemblance to the axial stone circles: the recumbent stone circles (RSCs) found several hundred kilometers away on the opposite side of the British Isles, in northeastern Scotland. The Irish axial stone circles (ASCs), like their Scottish counterparts, consist of a single stone placed on its side, with all the other stones being set upright. Without exception, this recumbent stone is found in the southwestern or western part of the circle. But unlike the typical Scottish RSC, the recumbent in Irish ASCs is modest in size. The remaining stones in the circle tend to increase (not decrease, as with the RSCs) in height around to the opposite side, where we find a pair of uprights, generally the tallest, known as
The nature of the link between the two groups of monuments is unknown. The Scottish RSCs appear to be older, dating perhaps toward the end of the third millennium B.C.E., while the ASCs appear to extend well into the second millennium. However, secure archaeological dating evidence is still scarce. Postulating a direct link, some authors refer to the axial stone circles as recumbent stone circles; others warn against prejudging the nature of the interrelationship between the two groups and argue in favor of a distinctive term for a distinctive group of monuments.
Despite some systematic differences, the strong resemblance—both in form and orientation—between these two geographically separate groups of stone circles is undeniable. It is perhaps surprising, then, that when we look more closely at the individual orientations of the ASCs we find that—quite unlike the RSCs—they were not guided by particular topographic or astronomical considerations in any consistent way. Unlike their Scottish counterparts, where there is a clear preference for a reasonably distant horizon behind the recumbent, the ASCs are found in a variety of topographic situations, some with high ground rising close behind the recumbent and blocking the distant view completely. And unlike the RSCs, where there is a consistent pattern of orientation in relation to the moon, the Irish sites show no consistent pattern in relation to any astronomical body.
The lesson to be learned here is that a variety of considerations may have influenced the location and orientation of any prehistoric ritual monument, including topographic factors (relationships to prominent natural features such as visible mountains, sacred places, water sources, and so on) as
well as the heavenly bodies. In different places and different times, different considerations might have held sway according to the dominant tradition. While some elements of prevailing traditions may be carried forward from place to place and through time, others may be modified or be abandoned. The sky forms only one part of a much bigger picture, even where we do have clear and consistent astronomical alignments. Whatever the links between these two very distinctive stone circle traditions at the opposite sides of Scotland and Ireland, it is clear that the strong astronomical (and specifically, lunar) associations of the Scottish RSCs were not transmitted across to their Irish counterparts.
The lack of consistent astronomy among the axial stone circles does not necessarily mean that one or two individual examples could not have been deliberately astronomically oriented, for reasons specific to a particular place and time. The most quoted examples are Drombeg, near Ros У gCairbre (Ross Carbery) on the south coast of County Cork, a well-preserved circle whose axis points toward midwinter sunset; and nearby Bohonagh, which faces more or less due west and has been claimed as aligned upon sunset at the equinox. However, the fact that Drombeg is the only one of several dozen large axial stone circles with a clear solstitial alignment must raise the possibility that this could have arisen by chance, and the equinoctial interpretation of Bohonagh is subject to certain difficulties that pertain to all putative equinoctial alignments.
See also:
Поделиться книгой: