Lunar archaeoastronomy

[Gfamily]

I've been asked if I can give a talk on behalf of our club to a group of customers from what you might call a "Crystals and Dreamcatchers" shop. They'll be at a luxury glamping site and amongst their other activities will be Forest Bathing and that sort of thing.

It's planned for the summer solstice weekend, so I've suggested a topic on The Solstices and how ancient people responded to it.

I'm happy to be able to put a scientific basis to what they're enjoying, and if I can help to put it in a historical human context I would enjoy doing that as well. 

It so happens that next year is also approaching a Lunar Major Standstill; which is when the Full Moon has its greatest Southerly ecliptic declination (actually in January 2025). This is related to the Draconic Cycle which marks the precession of the Nodes of the lunar orbit around the earth. As a result of it being the summer solstice and the lunar standstill, the Full Moon (early on the Saturday morning ) will be about as low above the horizon as it ever is at the Meridian. 

In terms of information about how neolithic people responded to the solstices, I'm fairly well able to find information that can be included, but I'm less sure about information about the Lunar effects. It's believed that many prehistoric constructions were built to align with the Lunar Standstill (for example the Callanish structure on the Isle of Lewis), and some of the 'recumbent' stone circles in NE Scotland, but I could do with pointers to relatively recent and (preferably) authoritative sources. 

Anyone able to help? 

Thanks

Edited November 8, 2023 by Gfamily
Clarify Major Lunar Standstill

[Barry Fitz-Gerald]

You might find some useful stuff in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology published by Equinox Publishing.

[Tiny Clanger]

Have you come across Prof. Ruggles ? He has put a lot of his work online

https://www3.cliveruggles.com/

some of his early PDFs ( iirc ) deal with checking  Lunar alignments on Lewis  https://www3.cliveruggles.com/index.php/publications/2-publications?showall=&start=2

A fairly basic RAS leaflet based on Stonehenge has some good ways to explain things, might make a decent starting point for your pitch to an audience who probably don't have much scientific background

https://www.cultural-astronomy.com/storage/app/media/RAS-Stonehenge/RAS_Stonehenge_factsheet.pdf

 

[Gfamily]

Thanks for those references.  I'd seen mention of Prof Ruggles, but didn't know that he had made so much available online.  

[inedible_hulk]

For Scottish sites, such as Callanish, you could check the records on Canmore if you haven’t already. There’s a lot of relatively recent detail in the entry for Callanish.

You could also try a search of the ADS library for potential sources of information.

[SwiMatt]

Good to see Ruggles already cited here. If you manage to put your hands on his book "Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland", it contains a lot of valuable information and a good summary of his studies and of the state of the field at the end of the 90s (and it hasn't evolved too much, from what I can gather). I also urge you (as would Ruggles) to be careful on what sources you consult, since the field of archaeoastronomy is filled with extraordinary claims with very little evidence. Unfortunately, studying astronomical knowledge so far back in time is very very difficult (studying ANYTHING historical so far back in time is difficult). We lack the ethnographic sources to make sure inferences: we know basically nothing sure about religious and spiritual thinking of neolithic people.

It is still a fascinating exercise to imagine what our ancestors thoughts when looking up, it's just hard to say anything factual - just a lot of hints and possibilities. One thing we know, is that they definitely looked at the stars

This such an amazing subject, so good luck and I hope you'll enjoy your presentation!

[inedible_hulk]

9 hours ago, SwiMatt said:

we know basically nothing sure about religious and spiritual thinking of neolithic people.

Precisely. They’ll be a subtle language to these monuments, most of which I suspect we can’t even begin to recognise.

[SwiMatt]

12 hours ago, inedible_hulk said:

Precisely. They’ll be a subtle language to these monuments, most of which I suspect we can’t even begin to recognise.

Absolutely right. And whatever recognition we could have will always be biased by our own culture and our own specific way of interpreting the spirituality of Nature. 4000 years and more are a hell of a long time, especially when it comes to human thought...