ArcheoAstronomy

Archeoastronomy is the study of ancient ways of understanding astronomical phenomena. It inquires in how people of the past ages made sense of celestial events, how they interpreted then and how the sky figured in their daily lives.

Many people take archeoastronomy as the study of ancient astronomy, but this is strongly opposed by many researchers such as Clive Ruggles, proposing that archeoastronomy is entirely different since it takes a look at the symbolic beliefs of cultures in relation to the sky, whereas astronomy is a scientific discipline strongly grounded on empirical evidence, principles and verifying experiments.

Archeoastronomy also overlaps with ethno astronomy, which is the name for the study in anthropology of sky watching and recent societies. Moreover, it is also closely linked with historical astronomy that makes use of historical records to address astronomical issues. It can be noticed that the discipline are related to many other disciplines, and it is all due to the fact that archeoastronomy adapts whatever method that is needed to uncover facts and yield a better understanding of celestial events.

Archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, history, statistics and probability are the usual areas that archeoastronomy put into play. Since it is interdisciplinary, it can be applied to different fields as well, such as landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology.

Scroll to Top