Archaeoastronomy

The archeoastronomy deals based on scientific archaeological excavations, architectural monuments, artefacts and their astronomical explanation and interpretation. The field is also known as Astro or Paläoastronomie archeology and ethno astronomy. The term archaeoastronomy was built in the 1960s.

Early mainly from England coming work on archaeoastronomy resulted from the British astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer. As one of the founders of this discipline, the American astronomer Gerald Hawkins apply, in his book Stonehenge Decoded ( and previously in a 1963 Nature article. ) Pointed out in 1965 that in the location and distance ratios between the stones of Stonehenge sun and moon measure services are encrypted. You can use these to predict sunrises and sunsets, the motion of the moon and sun and lunar eclipses. His work has been criticized by archaeologists, but well received, even if his interpretation of Stonehenge as a computing machine is now hardly supporters in the wider public, astronomical alignments are also accepted at Newgrange megalithic sites such as circle or grave sites.

Today, many scientists are working with the astronomical knowledge of our ancestors. When interpreting the findings of archaeoastronomy works closely with the astronomical chronology and draw on the methodology.

Most speak of archaeoastronomy in cultures that left no written records and where to continue only archaeological methods. A special role is played by the Mesoamerican archaeoastronomy, since here there are written records (such as the Dresden Codex ).

A major portion of archaeoastronomy deals with megalithic astronomy, so with the astronomical knowledge of the cultures in the Megalithgebieten Europe from the middle Neolithic through the Bronze Age ( about 4500 BC to 1500 BC ). In addition to the megalithic tombs menhirs, stone rows and stone circles are included in the analysis. Broadly, the megalithic astronomy, the idea that in a number of monuments possessed one or more elements astronomical significance.

Some interpretations in the field of archaeoastronomy are controversial, such as the interpretation of the cave paintings of Lascaux as a kind of planetarium and various rock engravings in caves in the same region as astronomical markers.

Since 1981, the International Astronomical Union organizes scientific conferences, such as The " Oxford " International Symposia on Archaeoastronomy. 2011 was the ninth meeting in Lima, Peru.