Silva Fabio - Skyscapes

Published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by
OXBOW BOOKS
10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW

and in the United States by
OXBOW BOOKS
908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083

Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2015

Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-840-4
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-841-1; Mobi Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-842-8;
PDF Edition: ISBN 978-1-78297-843-5

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Skyscapes : the role and importance of the sky in archaeology / edited by Fabio Silva and Nicholas
Campion.
1 online resource.
Includes bibliographical references.
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
ISBN 978-1-78297-841-1 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-78297-842-8 (prc) -- ISBN 978-1-78297-843-5 ( pdf)
-- ISBN 978-1-78297-840-4 (paperback) 1. Archaeoastronomy. 2. Landscape archaeology. 3. Sky
-Social aspects--History. 4. Cosmology--History. 5. Astrology--History. 6. Sacred space--History. 7.
Prehistoric peoples. 8. Social archaeology. I. Silva, Fabio (Fabio P.) II. Campion, Nicholas.
GN799.A8
523.1--dc23

2015007231

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Front cover: Vincent Van Goghs Starry Night, 1889. Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA/Bridgeman Images

CONTENTS

J. McKim Malville

Fabio Silva

Nicholas Campion

Liz Henty

Daniel Brown

Lionel Sims

Tore Lomsdalen

Bernadette Brady

Frank Prendergast

Olwyn Pritchard

Fabio Silva

Timothy Darvill

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

BERNADETTE BRADY

Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture,

School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

DANIEL BROWN

Physics and Mathematical Science,

School of Science and Technology Nottingham Trent University, UK

NICHOLAS CAMPION

Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture,

School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

TIMOTHY DARVILL

Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,

Faculty of Science and Technology Bournemouth University, UK

LIZ HENTY

Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture,

School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

TORE LOMSDALEN

Independent scholar

J. MCKIM MALVILLE

Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences University of Colorado Boulder, USA

FRANK PRENDERGAST

College of Engineering & Built Environment Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland

OLWYN PRITCHARD

School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

FABIO SILVA

Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture,

School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK

and Institute of Archaeology University College London, UK

LIONEL SIMS

School of Law and Social Sciences University of East London, UK

PREFACE
Meaning and Intent in Ancient Skyscapes An Andean Perspective

J. McKim Malville

The Search for Meaning

The papers in this volume deal mostly with prehistoric archaeoastronomy in the Old World, for which there is little or no ethnographic or ethnohistoric material that can assist in the interpretation of findings. This lack was initially contrasted with the situation in Mesoamerica for which there was rich ethnographic information and led to the distinction between Old World and New World archaeoastronomy, initially codified by Aveni (1989) as green (European) versus brown (American) archaeoastronomy.

That distinction is less cogent today, as archaeoastronomy in the Americas has expanded into areas and time slots where there is also a lack of ethnographic material, such as Cahokia (Illinois), Chaco Canyon (New Mexico), and Peru. For example, the archaeologist Steve Lekson (2008) has vigorously argued that the Chaco Canyon culture was an unsuccessful experiment, which was abandoned by the ancestors of todays Puebloan peoples, and therefore one cannot use Puebloan ethnography to understand the nature of Chacoan culture. In the case of Peru, millennia of pre-Inca Andean culture lie far beyond the reach of the Spanish Chroniclers and their writings. The ethnographic record is similarly mute and one must rely upon thorough investigations of the archaeological record to probe cultural context and meaning.

An ever-present question in cultural astronomy and archaeoastronomy is why were events in the heavens so powerful and meaningful to ancient cultures that they caused the investment of energy and wealth in the construction of stone structures aligned to astronomical phenomena. The ethnographic approach known as thick descriptions of human behavior, championed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973, 1983), can help us in our search for meaning contained in ancient skyscapes. Thick description emphasizes the emic (as opposed to etic) significance of social action and seeks an explanation. Applied to archaeoastronomy, thick descriptions should lead to using astronomical markers as signifiers of processes and meaning within that culture. As Geertz (1983, 58) comments, The trick is to figure out what the devil they think they are up to. Thick description is clearly a task, at least as delicate, if a bit less magical, as putting oneself into some elses skin. Geertzs (1983, 50).

To reach an understanding of those cultural processes that manifest as astronomical alignments, we need a multi-disciplinary approach. Limiting ourselves only to astronomy will never fully reveal the cultural complexity of a site. Not only must we work with our archaeologist colleagues, but we need to collaborate, when possible, with cultural anthropologists, linguists, ethno-historians, and even paleo-hydrologists. Furthermore, archaeoastronomers need to investigate multiple aspects of the archaeological record, even if they do not contain obvious astronomical elements. In his introduction to the proceedings of the Oxford IX conference in Lima (Peru), Ruggles (2011, 7) alludes to this kind of a holistic research programme: the archaeoastronomer not only has to focus on broader cultural questions but also has to have sufficient genuine interest in these broader questions not to become demotivated if the data start to produce non-astronomical answers. In a recent paper Silva has mirrored this by arguing for a stronger archaeological and cultural contextualization of archaeoastronomical work, something he called skyscape archaeology (2014, 25).

Different Ontologies

Meaning and intent embedded in ancient skyscapes may reveal a totally different understanding of reality, a different ontology. The so-called ontological turn in anthropology can provide new tools in our search for meaning (Henare