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TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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S29. Visualising Skyscapes:
Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
Fabio Silva (f.silva@uwtsd.ac.uk) and Liz Henty (lizhenty@f2s.com)
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
Landscape archaeology opened up new avenues for archaeologists to understand how the environment
that societies inhabit determines their interactions with their surroundings, creating part of an
interwoven relationship with the world. The land itself regulates subsistence and economic
possibilities and its contours and rivers determine routes and the location of meeting places, festivals
and ritual centres. Above the land and its horizon lies the celestial sphere, that great dome of the sky
which governs light and darkness, critical to life itself, yet its influence is often neglected in the
archaeological narrative.
This neglect is, at least partially, because the average westerner today is disengaged from the sky:
people notice whether the sun is shining, or whether the days are getting longer or shorter but few will
know, for example, what phase the moon is on a given day, or that the sun does not rise due East
every day. The scientific field of modern astronomy has helped further disassociate the sky from the
common westerner by focusing on the deep sky, which is inaccessible without abstract conceptual
frameworks, such as advanced mathematics, and the technological developments of the Space Age.
This disengagement with the immediacy of the sky has been projected onto the past cultures that are
the purview of the archaeologist. However, as the historical and ethnographic records attest, this
ignorance of the sky is a symptom of modern western culture, not a universal. In fact, if one were to
reverse the argument and claim that “There is no human society that does not somehow, in some way,
relate its fears, concerns, hopes, and wishes to the sky” (Campion 2012, 1) one would be closer to the
truth. As Darvill said (2015, 147), “the sky was an important domain that archaeology needs to
understand better”.
In order to understand the role and importance of the skyscape for the cultures we study, past or
present, we first need to re-engage with the sky ourselves. Only through looking at the sky with
phenomenological eyes, without any need for conceptual abstractions nor a scientific take on reality,
can we realize how simple it would have been for any non-modern to connect with it. Engaging with
the skyscape is an embodied, lived, experience and, as such, it is available to everyone. One only has
to step outside the urban sprawls and their light pollution and look up to understand this. An even
better sense of what pre-modern peoples would have experienced is provided by the Dark Sky
reserves that are now protected areas in the western hemisphere. But, even there, the sky is not exactly
the same: like the landscape, with its changing vegetation cover over millennia, so too the skyscape
changes. However, while it is difficult to reconstruct past landscapes as changes are dictated by the
complex interweaving of geography, environment and climate, modern tools can accurately
reconstruct, and therefore help the scholar visualize, the palaeo-skies that a pre-modern would have
seen.
This session will focus on how different cultures have visualized, and therefore engaged with, their
skyscapes: whether via artistic or symbolic representations, ritual, mythology, structural alignments or
other architectural features. It will also feature modern visualization techniques for skyscape
archaeology – such as the use of 3D modelling, non-invasive surveys, Geographical Information
Systems and planetarium software – that allow archaeologists to (re-)engage with the sky and, in
conjunction with traditional archaeological research, obtain a more complete and nuanced
understanding of the societies being studied.
References
Campion, Nicholas, 2012. Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions. New York: New York Press.
Darvill, Tim, 2015. ‘Afterword: Dances Beneath a Diamond Sky’. In Fabio Silva and Nicholas Campion (eds).
Skyscapes: The Role and Importance of the Sky in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 140-148.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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Proposed Session Order
1. Liz Henty – Skyscape Archaeology: Where are we now?
2. Georg Zotti – Visualizing Skyscapes: GIS-based 3D modelling and astronomical
simulation
3. Lionel Sims – Toads turning time: verifying visualizations of the Sanctuary
4. Ilaria Cristofaro – Reflecting the sky in water: a phenomenological exploration
5. Darrelyn Gunzburg – Time pursued by a Bear: Ursa Major and stellar time-telling in
the Paduan Salone
6. Suzanne Villeneuve and Julian Henao – Moon Monitoring Politics
7. Pamela Armstrong – A diachronic study of mid-Holocene skyscapes in southern
England and Wales: preliminary results
8. Daniel Brown – Skyscape Exploration: From Material Site to Apparent Non-Site and
Back Again
9. Bernadette Brady, Darrelyn Gunzburg and Fabio Silva – The Solar Discourse of the
Welsh Cistercians
10. John Grigsby – ‘Three stones in his belt’… astronomical imagery in myth and ritual
sites
11. Frédéric Heller and Georg Zotti – Early Bronze Age deep postholes alignments in
Linsmeau pointing towards astronomical events
12. Archaeologists versus archaeoastronomers or new best buddies? A round table
discussion
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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1. Skyscape Archaeology: Where are we now?
Liz Henty
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
lizhenty@f2s.com
This presentation looks at how skyscape archaeology is pushing back the frontiers which have limited
archaeoastronomy. Ruggles (2011) expressed concern that archaeoastronomers were “running round
in the same circles” rather than pushing back the frontiers of the ‘interdiscipline’. In referring to the
inclusion of archaeoastronomy in Renfrew and Bahn’s Archaeology: the Key Concepts (2005) he
suggested archaeoastronomy had entered mainstream archaeology.
This prompted me to ask two important questions: firstly has archaeoastronomy really entered the
archaeological mainstream? To answer this I conducted a survey to assess the attitudes of
archaeologists using questionnaires handed out at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conferences and
those from an online version using Google Drive. My results will be examined to see if the attitudes
of archaeologists have softened since the acrimonious debates of the 1970’s and 1980’s about
megalithic astronomy.
Secondly, are we still running around the same circles or are we branching out? This paper will look
at the initiatives of the Skyscapes sessions at both the TAG conferences and the National Astronomy
meetings. Additionally there is the Sophia Centre’s ‘Skyscape, Cosmology and Archaeology’ module
at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and an optional skyscapes module in their archaeology
degree. Another development is the launch of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology aimed to progress
a methodological approach to archaeoastronomy which thoroughly incorporates archaeology. Finally,
following a skyscapes discussion at TAG 2014 it was agreed that a short guide to archaeoastronomy,
written with archaeologists in mind, would help archaeologists engage with the sky. David Connolly
took this project on and a BAJR guide, Archaeoastronomy for Archaeologists (Connolly 2016) has
just been published.
References
Connolly, David, 2016, Archaeoastronomy for Archaeologists. BAJR Guide 43 [online].
www.bajr.org/BAJRGuides/43_ArchaeoAstronomy/43_ArchaeAstronomy.pdf
Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JSA
Ruggles, C. L. N., 2005, ‘Archaeoastronomy’. In C. Renfrew & P. Bahn (eds), Archaeology: the Key
Concepts, Abingdon: Routledge.
Ruggles, C. L. N., 2011. ‘Pushing back the frontiers or still running around the same circles?
‘Interpretative archaeoastronomy’ thirty years on’. In Clive L. N. Ruggles (ed),
Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges between Cultures. UK:
Cambridge University Press.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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2. Visualizing Skyscapes: GIS-based 3D modelling and astronomical
simulation
Georg Zotti
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, Vienna
Georg.Zotti@archpro.lbg.ac.at
Computer-based visualization has become a powerful tool for both research on cultural heritage
artefacts and dissemination of research results to a broader audience (Denard 2009). Virtual
archaeology applies methods from virtual reality to recreate digital models of past landscapes with
human settlements. Immersive applications allow the user to not only see reconstructed architecture
from far away, but also to enter the recreated landscape in the first-person perspective and walk
around and explore the site.
However, a proper simulation of any virtual landscape should also include the upper half, the sky
dome with daylight and an accurately placed sun which can play a role for the simulation of light-and-
shadow effects or epiphanies in sacred places, or for proper simulation of the nocturnal appearance,
moon, stars and planets, the Milky Way and occasionally the Zodiacal light, thus recreating the
complete historical skyscape (Zotti 2015).
Starting in 2010, the author has been improving the popular open-source desktop planetarium
Stellarium to create the most versatile environment for historically accurate skyscape simulation,
including the possibility of loading a 3D virtual model of a properly georeferenced landscape with
reconstructions of buildings under the artificial sky (Zotti 2016). Moving through the architecture, the
user can explore sight lines or temple axes and their possible targets (e.g., solstice sunrises) on the
landscape horizon (Frischer et al., 2016), and light and shadow phenomena can be explored with the
light of sun, moon or even the planet Venus. The presentation will show Stellarium in use as a
simulation environment for both research and outreach to a wide audience.
References
Denard, Hugh, 2009. The London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage.
2009. Accessed November 2016.
http://www.londoncharter.org/fileadmin/templates/main/docs/london_charter_2_1_en.pdf
Frischer, Bernard, Georg Zotti, Zaccaria Mari, Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, 2016.
Archaeoastronomical experiments supported by virtual simulation environments: Celestial
alignments in the Antinoeion at Hadrian's Villa (Tivoli, Italy). Digital Applications in
Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (DAACH) 3, July 2016. DOI:
10.1016/j.daach.2016.06.001. pp. 55–79.
Zotti, Georg, 2015. “Visualization Tools and Techniques”. In Clive L.N. Ruggles, editor, Handbook
for Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, volume 1, chapter 29. New York: Springer
Reference.
Georg Zotti. “Open-Source Virtual Archaeoastronomy”. In Vito F. Polcaro et al., editors, Proc.
SEAC2015, Rome, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 16(4), 2016. pp.17-23 ,
in press.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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3. Toads turning time: verifying visualizations of the Sanctuary
Lionel Sims
University of East London, Emeritus
lionel.sims@btinternet.com
The ‘Sanctuary’ structure in the late Neolithic Avebury monument complex has been visualized
in turn as a four stage mainly roofed structure (Piggott 1940), a charnel house (Burl 2002), a
maze (Thomas 1999) or as a place for the ritual marking of status and identity (Pollard and
Reynolds 2002). As a subsidiary wood and stone structure between the mainly stone Avebury
circle and the mainly wood West Kennet Palisades, like Woodhenge in the Stonehenge
monument complex, it is anomalous for the materiality model’s (Parker Pearson 2012)
expectation that wood and stone structures are categorically separated places of, respectively, life
and death. These various visualizations of the Sanctuary will be interrogated by the evidence of
archaeological site excavation, 3D modelling of the monument in its landscape integrated with
planetarium software, archaeoastronomy, and myth analysis. The archaeological data provides
detailed evidence of a complex syntax of material culture at the Sanctuary. The 3D modelling
reveals tiered concentric lintelled post circles and stone arrangements. The archaeoastronomy
reveals a full suite of lunar-solar alignments. These three dimensions are verified by the emerging
convergence between Palaeolithic Continuity Theory and the phylogenetic analysis of myth
(Witzel 2012) which predicts that proto-Indo-European myth will be one regional outcome from
an earlier hunter-gatherer cultural substrate. The findings from all four disciplines can be
integrated into another visualization of the Sanctuary in which combined materials and
alignments were intended to ritually repair a cosmology perceived in the Neolithic and Early
Bronze Age to be threatened with stasis.
References
Burl, A., 2002. The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany. London: Yale UP.
Parker Pearson, M., 2012. Stonehenge. London: Simon and Schuster.
Piggott, S., 1940. ‘Timber circles: a re-examination’. Archaeological Journal 96, 193-222.
Pollard, J. and Reynolds, A., 2002. Avebury: The biography of a landscape. Stroud: Tempus.
Thomas, J., 1999. Understanding the Neolithic. London: Routledge.
Witzel, E.J.M., 2012. The Origins of the World’s Mythologies. Oxford: UP.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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4. Reflecting the sky in water: a phenomenological exploration
Ilaria Cristofaro
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
ila29@hotmail.com
From a phenomenological perspective, the reflective quality of water has visually dramatic impact,
especially when combined with the light of celestial phenomena. However, the potentialities of this
reflection of the sky are often undervalued when interpreting archaeoastronomical sites. From
artificial water spaces such as ditches, “huacas” and wells to natural ones such as rivers, lakes and
puddles, water spaces add a layer of interacting reflections to landscapes. In the cross-
cultural cosmological understanding of skyscapes and waterscapes, a metaphorical association
respectively with the Heaven and the Underworld is often revealed. In this research, sky-waterscapes
are explored through the practice of auto-ethnography and reflexive phenomenology. The mirroring of
the sky in water opens up themes such as the continuity, liminality and manipulation: water spaces act
as continuation of the sky on the land, so as to make the heavenly dimension easily accessible.
Because of their spatial liminality when reflected, celestial phenomena can be manipulated according
to their temporality. Sky-waterscapes appear as specular worlds, where water spaces are assumed to
be doorways to the inner reality of the unconscious. The fluid properties of water have the visual
effect of dissipating borders, merging shapes and, therefore, of dissolving identities. For this reason
water spaces may embody symbolic death experiences such as rituals of initiation, where the
annihilation of the individual allows the creative process of a new life cycle. These contextually
generalisable results aim to inspire new perspectives on sky-and-water related archaeological case
studies, and give value to the practice of reflexive phenomenology as crucial method of research.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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5. Time pursued by a Bear: Ursa Major and stellar time-telling in the
Paduan Salone
Darrelyn Gunzburg
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
d.gunzburg@uwtsd.ac.uk
This paper focuses on the images of four bears found along the top register of the fresco scheme of the
first-floor Salone of the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, Italy. To ask why bears appear in this register
is to question how bears were viewed in the medieval period. Previous scholars have described these
Salone images as representing qualities, such as ‘wicked and hot tempered’. Nevertheless, as my
previous research has shown (Gunzburg 2013), these top register images are reflective of the
constellations that dictated the seasons and the cycle of the year as seen over Padua c.1309. Thus a
more likely candidate is Ursa Major, the Great Bear. This presentation creates four sky maps at
midnight, which was relevant for time telling by the sky at this time (Vincent and Chandler 1969:
375-376). The sky maps are created for Padua specifically for when the sun ingressed into the zodiac
signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius. They reveal the changing rotational pattern of Ursa
Major from ‘hibernation’ to descent. These sky maps are then connected with the position of the bears
in the Salone fresco scheme. This concept of the constellation of the Great Bear Ursa Major in its four
positions as seasonal markers in the sky sits within the philosophy of time telling by the stars (Hannah
2009:14). Finally, this paper argues that these older time-telling strategies (Reeves 1916: 441;
McCluskey 1990: 14; McCluskey 1998: 111) not only had practical applicability but that such
knowledge-practice continued across cultures and time. Their appearance on the walls of the Salone in
the ‘elite’ visual language of this fourteenth-century Paduan fresco offers evidence for that practice
continuing into the late medieval era.
References
Frank, R.M. ‘Hunting the European sky bears: When bears ruled the earth and guarded the gate of
heaven.’ In Astronomical Traditions in Past Cultures, edited by V. Koleva and D. Kolev.
116-142. Sofia: Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and National
Astronomical Observatory Rozhen, 1996.
Gibbon, William B. ‘Asiatic Parallels in North American Star Lore: Ursa Major.’ The Journal of
American Folklore 77, no. 305 (1964): 236-250.
Gunzburg, Darrelyn. ‘Giotto's Sky: The fresco paintings of the first floor Salone of the Palazzo della
Ragione, Padua, Italy.’ Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 7, no. 4 (2013):
407-433.
Hannah, Robert. Time in Antiquity. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.
McCluskey, Stephen C. ‘Gregory of Tours, Monastic Timekeeping, and Early Christian Attitudes to
Astronomy.’ Isis 81, no. 1 (1990).
McCluskey, Stephen C. Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Reeves, E. A. ‘Night Marching by Stars.’ The Geographical Journal 47, no. 6 (1916): 440-455.
Vincent, Clare, and Bruce Chandler. ‘Nighttime and Easter Time: The Rotations of the Sun, the
Moon, and the Little Bear in Renaissance Time Reckoning.’ The Metropolitan Museum of
Art Bulletin 27, no. 8 (1969): 372-384.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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6. Moon Monitoring Politics
Suzanne Villeneuve
University of Toronto and Simon Fraser University
suzanne_villeneuve@sfu.ca
Julian Henao
Simon Fraser University
In the study of the origin of calendars and sophisticated celestial monitoring among prehistoric
complex hunter/gatherers, a key issue has been the motivation underlying the development of these
practices in human cultural evolution. We argue that these record-keeping systems make theoretical
sense primarily as part of the socio-political dynamics surrounding the creation and maintenance of
inequality in complex hunter-gatherers. From an ethnoarchaeological perspective, restricted esoteric
knowledge of celestial monitoring as well as ritual scheduling served to help maintain ritual networks
and political relationships. This facilitated the creation of organized religious-political groups who
controlled community annual ritual rounds. It is these religious-political groups (e.g., sodalities) that
were central to much larger processes of cultural developments, and their success hinged, in part,
upon the careful monitoring of celestial phenomena used for ritual scheduling and the control of this
knowledge. We illustrate this through an ethnoarchaeology example from Sumba, Indonesia, where
the ‘skyscape’ infuses the on-going maintenance of traditional ritual practices, associated daily life,
and regional political networks. We focus especially on the role and importance of the specialist, and
the issue of knowledge transfer and new generations maintaining traditional practices in the face of
global modern influences under rapidly changing conditions. In this context, the irony of technology
comes into play, in terms of its ability for transformation yet also continuity and maintenance of
knowledge systems at least in the short term. We see this in the case of moon monitoring apps and
iPhones (and Facebook) changing celestial monitoring practices, calendar maintenance,
announcements of ritual scheduling and youth training for their future roles in religious-political
organizations.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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7. A diachronic study of mid-Holocene skyscapes in southern England and
Wales: preliminary results
Pamela Armstrong
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
yewcedditcyster@btinternet.com
Scarre (2004, 143) said that the construction of a megalithic structure was not ‘just a crude
manipulation of materials, an early form of unsophisticated architecture before anything better was
available; much more than that, [monumental structures] incorporate or exemplify particular attitudes
to or ideas about the world’.
This paper explores those ‘ideas about the world’ which the people of
prehistory may have had which were to do with the impulse, or lack thereof, to note the passage of
time. Using a preliminary data set of orientations of prehistoric structures, both monumental and
settlement, in Wales and the south west of England collected from the literature, this paper takes a
diachronic approach in order to assess whether there was significant shift in orientation interest
through the transitions of the mid-Holocene in this region of the United Kingdom. Whilst this
preliminary analysis does not yet consider the broader cultural context it provides a pared down
review which reveals whether seasonal affiliation, or lack thereof, existed on this landscape across a
range of sites.
References
Scarre, Chris, 'Displaying the Stones: The Materiality of "Megalithic" Monuments,' in Rethinking
Materiality the Engagement of Mind with the Material World, ed. Chris Gosden & Colin
Renfrew and Elizabeth DeMarrais (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, 2004).
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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8. Skyscape Exploration: From Material Site to Apparent Non-Site and
Back Again
Daniel Brown
Nottingham Trent University
daniel.brown02@ntu.ac.uk
A skyscape has been defined as sky framed by horizon and therefore land, sea and monuments (Silva
2015). This allows metaphors in the skyscape to become explored, meanings interpreted and
emotional engagement achieved. A dialogue is established between all components including cultural
and personal background provided by the viewer over time. Transforming from observer to watcher
and realising a dialogue between skyscape and viewer is the moment where the full skyscape is
experienced (Brown 2016a).
A skyscape experience is always a negotiation of meaning within the dialectic of materiality versus
non-materiality, seeing versus non-seeing, and site versus non-site proposed by Smithson (1968). The
planetarium software Stellarium has offered archaeoastronomers a resource to explore skyscapes.
Researchers have found it valuable to include photorealistic representations of a site to explore
possible meanings (Brown 2016b). But are we really exploring a skyscape? Should the site alone
speak for itself?
This presentation will outline how skyscapes are realised by including the deep phenomenological
engagement with sky, land and monuments, and also by exploring on a phenomenological level
Stellarium simulations. It will illustrate how any material site will always include conceptual
representations of culture. At first sight walking within Stonehenge one might appear to directly
engage with a pure material site, however the stones and patterns created are manifestations of a
cosmological concept and a non-site representation. Ultimately one is entangled amongst site and
non-site and skyscape becomes either site or non-site, site and non-site, or none at all.
References
Brown, D. (2016a), The Experience of Watching, 2016, Culture and Cosmos 17.2, 5-24.
Brown, D. (2016b), Memories unlocked and places explored – Stellarium, Temporality and
Skyscapes, Culture and Cosmos, in press.
Silva, F. (2015), ‘The Role and Importance of the Sky Archaeology: an introduction’ in Fabio Silva
and Nicholas Campion (Editors) Skyscapes: The Role and Importance of the Sky in
Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 1-7.
Smithson, R. (1968), "A provisional theory of non-sites" Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings
(1996): 364.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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9. The Solar Discourse of the Welsh Cistercians
Bernadette Brady, Darrelyn Gunzburg and Fabio Silva
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
b.brady@uwtsd.ac.uk
This paper reports on the continuing research of the Welsh Monastic Skyscape Project which
considers how the union of sun, landscape, and architecture can produce a theologically charged
environment. This paper takes a detailed focus of all extant Welsh Cistercian Abbeys and their
theological relationship to sun light. In 1994, Janet Burton (1994: 159,161) claimed that Cistercian
Abbeys supported the theological agenda of saving each individual monk’s soul and by extension, that
this would produce the salvation of the world. Later in 2001, Megan Cassidy-Welch (2001:164)
described the Cistercians’ desire to build ‘the earthly manifestation of heavenly space, a site that was
suffused with celestial longing’. This paper considers these Welsh Cistercian monastic sites and rather
than utilizing a statistical approach, as recommended in 2015 by Stephen McCluskey (2015:1709) we
drew instead on the approach suggested by Hugh Benson in 1957 (1957). Our methodology was
interdisciplinary, drawing together the fields of anthropology, archaeoastronomy, art history, and
medieval architecture. This methodology took into account the orientation of the abbey, the altitude of
any extant windows of the east and west ends, and how the structure made use of the local topography
to emphasise the sun’s light. We then placed these discovered orientations into a cultural context by
considering them within the framework of the Cistercian theology and philosophy of sun light.
References
Benson, Hugh, 'Church orientations and patronal festivals', The Antiquaries Journal, 36, 1956, pp.
205-213.
Burton, Janet E. 1994. The monastic and religious orders in Britain, 1000-1300 (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge).
Cassidy-Welch, Megan. 2001. Monastic spaces and their meanings, thirteenth-century English
Cistercian monasteries (Brepols: Belgium).
McCluskey, Stephen C. 2015. 'Orientation of Christian Churches.' in Clive L. N. Ruggles (ed.), The
Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (Springer Reference: New York).
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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10. ‘Three stones in his belt’… astronomical imagery in myth and ritual
sites
John Grigsby
University of Bournemouth
grigsby_john@hotmail.com
Following the work of Larsson and Kristiansen (2006) that uses Indo-European myth to explain the
iconography of Bronze Age Scandinavian art, it is worth asking whether the ceremonial sites of the
British Isles might also be illuminated through the application of myth. To this end I have used
Renfrew’s ‘Anatolian hypothesis’ (1987) that argues for a Neolithic spread of the Indo-European
languages to reconstruct a tentative ‘shaping mythology’ (Bradley 1998) behind Neolithic and Bronze
Age ritual sites in Britain, one which includes visual references to specific events in the heavens,
especially surrounding the winter solstice.
In this talk I will look at the imagery found in myth of the ‘rescuer of the sun’ and of the goddess
whose obscene gestures precede the release of the sun/fertility from its winter imprisonment, arguing
that such figures can be linked to the behaviour of the Milky Way and Orion at the solstice; I will
show how this stellar ‘narrative’ provides an origin for certain motifs found in Neolithic and Bronze
Age iconography – especially the lozenge symbols found on female figurines and in megalithic art. I
will then argue that the same stars are referenced in the alignments and design of many ceremonial
sites, suggesting such myths may have provided the narrative accompaniment to a seasonal drama
played out both in the heavens (skyscape) and re-enacted in ceremony in the landscape, and which
retain in their imagery detailed visualisations of these ancient skies.
References
Bradley, Richard. 1998. The Significance of Monuments. Routledge
Larsson, T and Kristiansen, K. 2006. The Rise of Bronze Age Society Travels, Transmissions and
Transformations. Cambridge
Renfrew, C. 1987. Archaeology and Language. Jonathan Cape
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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11. Early Bronze Age deep postholes alignments in Linsmeau pointing
towards astronomical events
Frédéric Heller
Service Public de Wallonie,
frederic.heller@spw.wallonie.be
Georg Zotti
LBI ArchPro, Vienna
The site of Linsmeau is located at the foot of the plateaus in the middle of Belgium on a colluvial
beach north of the Petite Gette River and at the end of its navigable zone. A series of 15 unusually
deep rooted post holes were uncovered there. Though few in number, they are atypical and they all
reach and bore into the underlying bedrock, at a depth of up to 1.4 metres. Their position, diameter
and spacing, rule out the idea they could have been used as part of a building. All of the posts show
clear evidence of being ripped out from their holes. In this, they differ from all the other posts found
on the site. Five of these posts seemed to form a cross oriented to the cardinal points with a line
coming from its centre towards the winter solstice sunrise. Since the 3D simulations done at the
Boltzmann Institute in Vienna showed that these were too far away from these directions, the present
study systematically studied the possible alignments from each post to the sky. The results of this
study show something new: when considering two posts and an astronomical event as the third point
of the line, alignments to both the summer solstice sunrise and sunset were discovered. Further
alignments to the sun’s cross quarter rising and setting were also noted and three others were aimed
towards the Major Lunar standstills (rising and setting). This paper will also consider whether this
post setting really constitutes an observing site.
TAG 2016, S29 Visualising Skyscapes: Material Forms of Cultural Engagement with the Heavens
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12. Archaeologists versus archaeoastronomers or new best buddies? A
round table discussion
Fabio Silva (moderator)
University of Wales Trinity Saint David
f.silva@uwtsd.ac.uk
This roundtable discussion will debate how can archaeoastronomers and archaeologists come to work
together in future and what skyscape archaeologists can do to bridge this gap. Why do so few
archaeologists engage with the skyscape? Is it lack of engagement with the sky, the celestial objects
and their motions, or a misunderstanding of how simple they are to track for any given society? Is it
the emphasis on mathematics and statistics in archaeoastronomers’ work that has apparently given a
misleading impression of past cultures? Is it the lack of corroborating archaeological detail in many
archaeoastronomy papers that make them suspect? Or is it that archaeoastronomy’s mistaken
association with popular fringe pseudo-archaeological books that is off-putting? We invite all
archaeologists to participate in this discussion, air their concerns and put forward their suggestions to
help us progress skyscape archaeology further through collaboration.
