Archaeoastronomy

Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures. It is often associated with historic cultures such as Stonehenge or the Maya civilization, but also with more recent societies such as the 19th century Western world.

History

The history of archaeoastronomy began with the realization that understanding ancient cultures requires understanding their view of the sky. This understanding has been facilitated by the decipherment of ancient scripts and the discovery of ancient astronomical artifacts, such as the Nebra sky disk and the Antikythera mechanism.

Methodology

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, integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term difficulty for archaeoastronomers.

Examples

One of the most famous examples of archaeoastronomy is the study of the ancient monument Stonehenge in England. The alignment of the stones suggests a connection with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, indicating a possible religious or astronomical purpose.

Another example is the Maya civilization, which had a complex astronomical and cosmological system, and many of their large structures, such as the El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza, were built with astronomical alignments in mind.

See also

• History of astronomy
• Cultural astronomy
• Ethnoastronomy
• Astronomical chronology