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Papers from the annual meeting of SEAC (European Society for Astronomy in Culture) held in Kecskemet in Hungary in 2004. Contents: 1) The Firestar in China - A European approach (Katalin Barlai, B. Lukacs); 2) The Function of the Minoan oval house at Chamaizi (Mary Blomberg and Goran Henriksson); 3) The orientation of Greek temples: a statistical analysis (Efrosyni Boutsikas) 4) Architecture of light (George Dimitriadis); 5) The orientation of the 'Hunenbetten' of Lower Saxony (A. C. Gonzalez-Garcia and L. Costa Ferrer); 6) The Dacian capital "Sarmizegetusa-Regia" was sited according to precise astronomic alignments and Pythagorean doctrines (Franz Kerek); 7) Megalithic complex Akhunovo - one of the most ancient observatories (Andrey Kirillov and Fyodor Petrov); 8) Domestic icons in the life of man from the Neolithic and Eneolithic age and their archaeoastronomical meaning (Ivelina Miteva, Mina Stoeva, Penka Muglova, Milen Mitev, Alexey Stoev); 9) Astronomical Basis of Arrangement of Sacral Space of the Eneolithic Burial Mounds in the Northern Pontic Area (on materials of the archaeological excavations) (Tamila Potyomkina); 10) Typology of the mountain Thrace archaeoastronomical sites (Alexey Stoev, Penka Muglova, Mina Stoeva, Ivelina Miteva); 11) The problem of time in prehistory, symbol signs and time measuring (Mina Stoeva); 12) Astronomy and landscape on Easter Island. New hints in the light of ethnographical sources (Juan Antonio Belmonte and Edmundo Edwards); 13) Month Names and Astronyms in Bulgarian Folk and Literary Heritage (Dimiter Kolev and Svetlana Koleva); 14) Wooden Calendars from Southeastern Bulgaria (Vesselina Koleva); 15) Celestial phenomena in Hungarian folk tradition (Szilvia Sebok); 16) The Pleiades constellation's ethnoastronomical aspects and the Romanian peasants (Florin Stanescu); 17) Ursa Major in Lithuanian folk tradition (Jonas Vaikunas); 18) Stars of Wonder: Venus in the Daylight Sky (Lajos Bartha); 19) How did the constellation of the Bear receive its name? (Peter E Blomberg); 20) Chronology for the Egyptian Pharaohs of the Amarna period and the Israeli leaders Moses and Joshua by correlation with eight solar eclipses (Goran Henriksson); 21) Glyphs E and D in the Lunar Series from Quirigua, Guatemala and Copan, Honduras (Stanislaw Iwaniszewski); 22) Cosmic spinning and weaving: Making the Texture of the World (Michael A. Rappengluck); 23) Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg: An Italian High Renaissance Villa (Curt Roslund, Emilia Pasztor, Goran Olofsson). ... Read more

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This substantial collection of papers on indigenous astronomical knowledge is quite unequalled in its scope and extent. The authors are drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, engineering, art history, history of science, history of religion, folklore, and mythology, and bring a variety of academic perspectives to bear upon aspects of celestial knowledge and perception in diverse social contexts from many different parts of the globe. The Americas provide the main geographical focus, with twenty of the 32 papers concerning indigenous north American groups such as the Navajo, Lakota, Zuni and Blackfoot, the Mixe and Tzotzil Maya of southern Mexico, the Andean highlands and the Amazonian region of Peru, and southern coastal Brazil. The remaining twelve articles extend to the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa, southern India, Java, Melanesia, Australia and Polynesia, with a few addressing broader synthetic themes. For a number of the culture areas dealt with in some detail here, other published information about sky knowledge is extremely scant. ... Read more

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Exploring Ancient Skies brings together the methods of archaeology and the insights of modern astronomy to explore the science of astronomy as it was practiced in various cultures prior to the invention of the telescope. The book reviews an enormous and growing body of literature on the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, the Far East, and the New World (particularly Mesoamerica), putting the ancient astronomical materials into their archaeological and cultural contexts.

The authors begin with an overview of the field and proceed to essential aspects of naked-eye astronomy, followed by an examination of specific cultures. The book concludes by taking into account the purposes of ancient astronomy: astrology, navigation, calendar regulation, and (not least) the understanding of our place and role in the universe.Skies are recreated to display critical events as they would have appeared to ancient observers -- events such as the supernova of 1054, the 'lion horoscope' or the 'Star of Bethlehem.'

Exploring Ancient Skies provides a comprehensive overview of the relationships between astronomy and other areas of human investigation.It will be useful as a reference for scholars and as a text for students in both astronomy and archaeology, and will be of compelling interest to readers who seek a broad understanding of our collective intellectual history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Explorers of ancient calendars and sacred geometry, take note
One of these days, if gas prices aren't too high, I hope to make a trip to Calgary to meet Kelley and Milone. William Sullivan (author of The Secret of the Incas) urged me to ante up for this terribly expensive book. It is phenomenal.

The authors are teachers/researchers (Kelley an archaeologist of the Maya, and Milone a professor of astronomy and physics) who have worked together with students over more than 25 years as they prepared this text. It includes everything you would ever want to know about naked-eye sky observation. The "naked eye" part is the key. No telescopes. Simply a history of the methods, tools and ritual objects/architectures related to recording what was observed in the sky and how those observations might have been interpreted.

I was impressed to find among the color plates a photo of a calendrically-aligned sun pyramid brought to the attention of researchers by Sullivan and his colleagues in Peru. Also included are references to "mavericks" such as von Dechend and diSantillana. Even more amazing, the book is introduced by Anthony Aveni, who praises the authors for the great service they have done for the field by compiling such an exhaustive reference frame--while at the same time distances himself somewhat from some of the work.

The authors present tidbits of research that would likely otherwise be lost, and it is this material that is so fascinating in understanding ancient culture and its roots in the present. Any researcher, no matter their area of expertise, is likely to find gold in this book. One example is a hand-held geometric artifact related to a stone circle celebration in ancient Ireland. I have not seen this object previously in the plethora of books on sacred geometry I have read over the past 30 years. It may provide a link between the goddess Hecate and her rhombos/magic wheel.

In summary, the authors' intent it to provide detailed observation training, with examples, and then to go at the inventory of worldwide literature. Rather than creating an interpretive frame, they include rather than exclude pieces of work outside the "mainstream." Proponents of 2012 calendrics would do well to read this book. Much work in the direction of precessional calendrics was done without much fanfare prior to the harmonic convergence of 1987. The book's extensive bibliography has the feel of tracking down lost family members whose existence was rendered meaningless in the face of scientific archaeoastronomy. ... Read more

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This study describes the recently discovered solar calendar created by the prehistoric Sinagua culture near Sedona Arizona about 1100 AD.The calendar employs the midday sun and prehistoric rock art to mark the time of the equinoxes, solstices and other ceremonial and agriculturally significant dates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sinagua Sunwatchers
I'm working on writing a book about a boy from that time period and it's been a great help. ... Read more

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This collection of studies by specialists in Egyptology and astronomy attempts to unlock some of the secrets of ancient Egyptian civilization. Among the subjects examined are the constellations of ancient Egypt, the Egyptian calendar, and landscape and symbolism, especially how they relate to the orientation of temples and royal tombs. ... Read more

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Medicine wheels, or sacred hoops, were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground. Most medicine wheels follow the basic pattern of having a center of stone(s), and surrounding that is an outer ring of stones with "spokes", or lines of rocks radiating from the center. Some ancient types of sacred architecture were built by laying stones on the surface of the ground in particular patterns common to aboriginal peoples. Originally, and still today, medicine wheels are stone structures constructed by certain indigenous peoples of North America for various astronomical, ritual, healing, and teaching purposes. Medicine wheels are still 'opened' or inaugurated in Native American spirituality where they are more often referred to as "sacred hoops", which is the favoured English rendering by some. There are various native words to describe the ancient forms and types of rock alignments. One teaching involves the description of the four directions. More recently, syncretic, hybridized uses of medicine wheels, magic circles, and mandala sacred technology are employed in New Age, Wiccan, Pagan and other spiritual discourse throughout the World. ... Read more

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Chapters: Zodiac, Archaeoastronomy, Flat Earth, Antikythera Mechanism, Metonic Cycle, Maya Calendar, Counter-Earth, Almagest, Biblical Magi, Indian Astronomy, Spherical Earth, Hebrew Astronomy, Astronomical Objects Proposed in Religion, Astrology and Ufology, Greek Astronomy, Biblical Cosmology, Astrology and Astronomy, Classical Planet, Egyptian Astronomy, Hipparchus on Sizes and Distances, Lost Lands, Australian Aboriginal Astronomy, Lunar Standstill, Myth of Er, Decans, Dendera Zodiac, Zij, Apocalypse of John - Dated Astronomically, Aristarchus on the Sizes and Distances, Firmament, Assyrian Eclipse, Catasterismi, List of Archaeoastronomical Sites by Country, Somnium Scipionis, Fifth Planet, El Caracol, Chichen Itza, Bora, Pretelescopic Astronomy, Trepidation, Star Lore, Equant, Tibetan Astronomy, Sublunary Sphere, the Indestructibles, Gods in the Sky, Topographia Christiana. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 359. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the study of how past people "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures." Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern astronomy is a scientific discipline, while archaeoastronomy considers other cultures' symbolically rich cultural interpretations of phenomena in the sky. 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 practice. Archaeoastronomy...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2864 ... Read more

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Chapters: Archaeoastronomy. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 326. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the study of how past people "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures." Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern astronomy is a scientific discipline, while archaeoastronomy considers other cultures' symbolically rich cultural interpretations of phenomena in the sky. 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 practice. Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, statistics and probability, and history. Because these methods are diverse and use data from such different sources, the problem of integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term issue for archaeoastronomers. Archaeoastronomy fills complementary niches in landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology. Material evidence and its connection to the sky can reveal how a wider landscape can be integrated into beliefs about the cycles of nature, such as Mayan astronomy and its relationship with agriculture. Other examples which have brought together ideas of cognition and landscape include studies of the cosmic order embedded in the roads of settlements. Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods. The mea...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=2864 ... Read more

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The “Gale Encyclopedia of Science” is written at a level somewhere between the introductory sources and the highly technical texts currently available. This six-volume set covers all major areas of science and engineering, as well as mathematics and the medical and health sciences, while providing a comprehensive overview of current scientific knowledge and technology. Alphabetically arranged entries provide a user-friendly format that makes the broad scope of information easy to access and decipher. Entries typically describe scientific concepts, provide overviews of scientific areas and, in some cases, define terms.