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As suggested by many users - and following the suggestion of Pete Glastonbury - we decided to add a new section to this forum, devoted to Archaeoastronomy. Wikipedia's definition of Archaeoastronomy is "...the study of how peoples in the past have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures."
Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including astronomy, statistics and probability, anthropology, and history as well as archaeology. Because these methods are so diverse and pull data from such different sources the problem of integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term issue for archaeoastronomers. Archaeoastronomy fills complementary niches to landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology. Material evidence and its connection to the sky can reveal how a wider landscape can be integrated into beliefs about the cycles of nature.
The term archaeoastronomy was first used by Elizabeth Chesley Baity in 1973, but as a topic of study it may be much older, depending on how archaeoastronomy is defined. Clive Ruggles says that Heinrich Nissen, working in the mid-nineteenth century was arguably the first archaeoastronomer. However, some other would place the origin even later, as according to Euan McKie: "...the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s.
Archaeoastronomy owes something of its poor reputation among scholars to its occasional misuse to advance a range of pseudo-historical accounts. For instance, during the 1930s Otto S. Reuter compiled a study on the astronomical orientations of ancient monuments that would place the Germans ahead of the Ancient Near East in the field of astronomy, demonstrating the intellectual superiority of the "Aryan Race." More recently Gallagher, Pyle, and Fell interpreted inscriptions in West Virginia (USA) as a description in Celtic Ogham alphabet of the supposed winter solstitial marker at the site. The controversial translation was supposedly validated by a problematic archaeoastronomical indication in which the winter solstice sun shone on an inscription of the sun at the site. Subsequent analyses criticized its cultural inappropriateness, as well as its linguistic and archeaoastronomical claims.
So, please remember that in this section we don't allow fantasy or shaky (i.e. not supported by actual facts) theories - for this kind of discussion there is an appropriate section.
Enjoy!
