Gebruiker:Thor NL/Onderhanden werk/Archeoastronomie

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Zonsopgang over Stonehenge tijdens de zomerwende van 2005.

Archeoastronomie is de studie van antieke of traditionele astronomieën in hun culturele context en steunend op archeologische en antropologische bewijzen. De antropologische studie van astronomische gebruiken in contemporaine samenlevingen wordt meestal etnoastronomie genoemd, hoewel er geen werkelijke consensus bestaat over de vraag of etnoastronomie gezien moet worden als een afzonderlijke discipline of dat het deel uitmaakt van de archeoastronomie. Archeoastronomie is tevens nauw gelieerd aan historische astronomie, het gebruik van historische bronnen met betrekking tot gebeurtenissen aan het firmament bij de beantwoording van astronomische vraagstukken, en de geschiedenis van de astronomie, die zich bedient van geschreven bronnen ter evaluatie van astronomische tradities uit het verleden.

Het wordt veelal in een adem genoemd met beweringen over het gebruik en de toepassing van astronomie door de bouwers van Stonehenge of de piramiden in Egypte.

Geschiedenis van de Archeoastronomie[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

Archeoastronomie is bijna net zo oud als de archaeologie zelf. Norman Lockyer was arguably the first archaeoastronomer working at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. His studies included an examinations of Egyptian temples in The Dawn of Astronomy in 1894 and of Stonehenge published as Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments Astronomically Considered in 1906. Some archaeologists followed. Francis Penrose published extensively in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on the astronomical alignment of Greek temples in the Mediterranean in the same period. Archaeoastronomy was, for a while, a respectable subject. The first issue of the archaeological journal Antiquity includes an article on archaeoastronomical research.[1]

Early archaeoastronomy began by surveying alignments of Megalithic stones in the British Isles and sites like Auglish in Co.Derry in an attempt to find statistical patterns

In the British Isles interest in archaeoastronomy waned until the 1960s when the astronomer Gerald Hawkins proposed that Stonehenge was a Neolithic computer. Around the same time the engineer Alexander Thom published his survey results of megalithic sites also proposed widespread practice of accurate astronomy in the British Isles. The claims of Hawkins were largely dismissed.[2] However, Thom's analysis continued to pose a problem. A re-evaluation of Thom's fieldwork showed that his claims of high accuracy astronomy were not fully supported by the evidence. Nevertheless there was evidence of widespread interest in astronomy associated with megalithic sites. The response from archaeologists was tepid. A few archaeologists such as Euan MacKie accepted Thom’s conclusions and published new prehistories of Britain.[3] Until the early 1980s most archaeoastronomical research in the United Kingdom was concerned with establishing the existence astronomical alignments in prehistoric sites by statistical means rather than the social practice of astronomy in ancient times.

It has been proposed that Maya sites such as Uxmal were built in accordance with astronomical alignments

In the New World anthropologists began to more fully consider the role of astronomy in Amerindian societies. This approach had access to sources that the prehistory of Europe lacks such as ethnographies[4] and the historical records of the early colonisers. This allowed New World archaeoastronomers to make claims for motives which in the Old World would have been mere speculation. The concentration on historical data led to some claims of high accuracy comparatively weak when compared to the statistically led investigations in Europe.

This came to a head at a meeting sponsored by the IAU in Oxford in 1981.[5] The methodologies and research questions of the participants were considered so different that the conference proceedings were published as two volumes.[6] Nevertheless the conference was considered a success in bringing researchers together and Oxford conferences have continued every four or five years at locations around the world. The subsequent conferences have resulted in a move to more interdisciplinary approaches with researchers aiming to combine the contextuality of archaeological research,[7] which broadly describes the state of archaeoastronomy today. Rather than merely establishing the existence of ancient astronomies archaeoastronomers seek to explain why people would have an interest in the night sky.

Major topics of archaeoastronomical research[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

The use of calendars[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

Aztec Stone of the Sun replica in El Paso, Texas, cast from the original to be found in the National Museum of Anthropology and History. A religious artefact showing how the Mexica people thought about time.

A common justification for the need for astronomy is the need to develop an accurate calendar for agricultural reasons. Ancient texts like Hesiod’s Works and Days, an ancient farming manual, would appear to contradict this. Instead astronomical observations are used in combination with ecological signs, such as bird migrations to determine the seasons. Ethnoastronomical work with the Mursi of Ethiopia shows that haphazard astronomy continued until recent times in some parts of the world.[8] All the same, calendars appear to be an almost universal phenomenon in societies as they provide tools for the regulation of communal activities.

An example of a non-agricultural calendar is the Mayan Tzolkin which is a cycle of 260 days. This count is based on an earlier calendar and is found throughout Mesoamerica. This formed part of a more comprehensive Maya Calendar which combined a series of astronomical observations and ritual cycles.[9]

Other peculiar calendars include ancient Greek calendars. These were nominally lunar, starting with the New Moon. In reality the calendar could paused or days skipped with confused citizens inscribing dates by both the civic calendar and ton theoi, by the moon.[10] The lack of any universal calendar for ancient Greece suggests that coordination of panhellenic events such as games or rituals could be difficult and that astronomical symbolism may have been used as a politically neutral form of timekeeping.[11]

Myth and cosmology[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

The constellation Argo Navis drawn by Johannes Hevelius in 1690.

Another motive for studying the sky is to understand and explain the universe. In pre-scientific times myth was a tool for achieving this and the explanations, while not scientific, are cosmologies.

The Incas arranged their empire to demonstrate their cosmology. The capital, Cusco, was at the centre of the empire and connected to it by means of ceques, conceptually straight lines radiating out from the centre.[12] These ceques connected the centre of the empire to the four suyus, which were regions defined by their direction from Cusco. The notion of a quartered cosmos is common across the Andes. Gary Urton, who has conducted fieldwork in the Andean villagers of Misminay, has connected this quartering with the appearance of the Milky Way in the night sky.[13] In one season it will bisect the sky and in another bisect it in a perpendicular fashion.

The importance of observing cosmological factors is also seen on the other side of the world. The Forbidden City in Beijing is laid out to follow cosmic order though rather than observing four directions the Chinese saw five, North, South, East, West and Centre. The Forbidden City occupied the centre of ancient Beijing.[14] One approaches the Emperor from the south, thus placing him in front of the circumpolar stars. This creates the situation of the heavens revolving around the person of the Emperor. The Chinese cosmology is now better known through its export as Feng Shui.

There is also much information about how the universe was thought to work stored in the mythology of the constellations. The Barasana of the Amazon plan part of their annual cycle based on observation of the stars. When their constellation of the Caterpillar-Jaguar falls they prepare to catch the pupating caterpillars of the forest as they fall from the trees.[15] This provides planning for food procurement at a time when hunger could otherwise be a problem.

A more well-known source of constellation myth are the texts of the Greeks and Romans. The origin of their constellations remains a matter of continuing and occasionally fractious debate.

Displays of power[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

The Intihuatana ("tie the sun") at Machu Picchu is believed to have been designed as an astronomic clock by the Incas, while some have speculated about the site's possible astrological role

The most common popular image of archaeoastronomy is the expression of hidden knowledge and power. By using stellar symbolism one can make claims of heavenly power.

By including celestial motifs in clothing it becomes possible for the wearer to make claims the power on Earth is drawn from above. It has been said that the Shield of Achilles described by Homer is also a catalogue of constellations.[16] In North America shields depicted in Comanche petroglyphs appear to include Venus symbolism.[17]

Solsticial alignments also can be seen as displays of power. In Egypt the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak has been the subject of much study. Evaluation of the site, taking into account the change over time of the obliquity of the ecliptic show that the Great Temple was aligned on the rising of the midwinter sun.[18] The length of the corridor down which sunlight would travel would have limited illumination at other times of the year.

In a later period the Serapeum in Alexandria was also said to have contained a solar alignment so that, on a specific sunrise, a shaft of light would pass across the lips of the statue of Serapis thus symbolising the Sun saluting the god.[19]

De beoefening van astronomie bij Stonehenge is nog steeds onderwerp van verhitte discussies.

Archeoastronomische organisaties en publicaties[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

Er zijn tegenwoordig twee academische organisaties van wetenschappers die zich bezighouden met de archeoastronomie. "ISAAC" — de "International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture" — opgericht in 1995 en thans sponsor van de Oxford conferenties en van Archaeoastronomy – het officieel orgaan van Astronomy in Culture. "SEAC" — de "Société Européenne pour l’Astronomie dans la Culture" — is al iets ouder; ze werd opgericht in 1992. SEAC organiseert jaarlijkse conferenties in Europa en publiceert, eveneens jaarlijks, verhandelingen over de onderwerpen die tijdens deze conferenties aan de orde worden gesteld.

Voorts levert ook de Journal for the History of Astronomy een achtenswaardige bijdragen aan de stroom van publicaties op archeoastronomisch gebied. In zevenentwintig van haar uitgaven publiceerde zij bovendien dan nog een jaarlijks supplement onder de titel Archaeoastronomy.

Referenties[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

  1. ↑ A.P. Trotter, Stonehenge as an Astronomical Instrument, Antiquity Vol 1:1, 1927, 42-53
  2. ↑ R.J.C. Atkinson, Moonshine on Stonehenge, Antiquity Vol 49:159, 1966, 212-6
  3. ↑ E. MacKie, Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain, St Martin’s Press, 1977, ISBN 023640041X
  4. ↑ M. Zeilik, The Ethnoastronomy of the Historic Pueblos, I: Calendrical Sun Watching, Archaeoastronomy No. 8 (Supplement to the Journal for the History of Astronomy), 1985, pp. S1-S24; The Ethnoastronomy of the Historic Pueblos, II: Moon Watching, Archaeoastronomy No. 10 (Supplement to the Journal for the History of Astronomy), 1986, pp. S1-S22.
  5. ↑ C.L.N. Ruggles, Archaeoastronomy in the 1990s, Group D Publications. 1993, ix, ISBN 1874152012
  6. ↑ A. F. Aveni (ed.), Archaeoastronomy in the New World: American Primitive Astronomy, CUP, 1982, ISBN 0521247314; D. C. Heggie (ed.), Archaeoastronomy in the Old World, CUP, 1982, ISBN 0521247349
  7. ↑ A.F. Aveni, World Archaeoastronomy, CUP, 1989, xi-xiii, ISBN 0521341809
  8. ↑ D. Turton and C.L.N. Ruggles, Agreeing to Disagree: The Measurement of Duration in a Southwestern Ethiopian Community, Current Anthropology Vol. 19.3, 1978, 585-600
  9. ↑ A.F. Aveni, Empires of Time, Basic Books, 1989, ISBN 0465019501
  10. ↑ S. McCluskey, The Inconstant Moon: Lunar Astronomies in Different Cultures, Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture Vol 15. 2000, 14-31
  11. ↑ A. Salt and E. Boutsikas, Knowing when to consult the oracle at Delphi. Antiquity Vol 79:305, 2005, 562-72
  12. ↑ B. Bauer and D. Dearborn, Astronomy and empire in the ancient Andes: the cultural origins of Inca sky watching, University of Texas, 1995, ISBN 0292708378
  13. ↑ G. Urton, At the crossroads of the earth and the sky: an Andean cosmology, University of Texas. 1981, ISBN 029270349X
  14. ↑ E.C. Krupp, Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings, John Wiley and Sons, 1997, 196-9, ISBN 0471329754
  15. ↑ M. Hoskin, The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, CUP, 1999, 15-6, ISBN 0521576008
  16. ↑ R. Hannah, The Constellations on Achilles’ Shield (Iliad 18. 485-489). Electronic Antiquity II.4, 1994, 15-6
  17. ↑ E.C. Krupp, Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings, John Wiley and Sons, 1997, 252-3, ISBN 0471329754
  18. ↑ E.C. Krupp, Light in the Temples, Records in Stone: Papers in Memory of Alexander Thom, ed. C.L.N. Ruggles, 1988, 473-499, ISBN 0521333814
  19. ↑ Rufinus, The destruction of the Serapeum

Zie ook[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

Externe links[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

Tijdschriften (engelstalig)[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]

[Categorie:Archeoastronomie] [Categorie:Archeologie|Acheoastronomie] [Categorie:Astronomie|Archeoastronomie]

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