Which Way Forward for Archaeoastronomy?
West Kennet Avenue as a Test Case by Lionel Sims
Neither statistical 'green' nor ethnographic 'brown' European and American styles of archaeoastronomy have so far provided convincing interpretations of the meaning of prehistoric monument alignments as related to cosmology. Statistical tests of the null hypothesis never reach the level of meaning, and contemporary ethnographic data cannot be equated with the cultures of prehistory. Gains have been made.
Since the 1980's European archaeoastronomy has established rigorous field work methods and scientific procedures that guard against the over-interpretation of prehistoric monument alignments that characterised the discipline in preceding decades. However, the discipline still has to embrace those procedures that can interpret unique prehistoric monuments rather than just regional groups of monuments, and to interpret a growing data base which includes many combined alignments on lunar standstills and the sun's solstices.
These hesitations seem to flow from a reticence to provoke an otherwise sceptical archaeology establishment. This paper argues that archaeoastronomy can perform an invaluable function with four-field anthropology (archaeology, social anthropology, biological anthropology and linguistics) as a keystone discipline within such a multi-disciplinary arch.
The paper demonstrates such a role through a critique of the present archaeological interpretations of the paradoxical approach of the West Kennet Avenue to the Avebury circle and henge in Wiltshire, England. It finds that the archaeology of cattle-herding monument building cultures and the anthropology of brideprice subverting brideservice can be synthesised with the archaeoastronomy of lunar-solar combined alignments to confirm an emergent model of an elite cattle-owning male-dominated cosmology which both continues and displaces an ancient lunar-governed hunting and gathering ritual system onto a solar timescale.
http://journalofcosmology.com/AncientAstronomy107.html
see also
Theoretical Sampling of Simulated Populations at West Kennet Avenue, Wiltshire, England: Transcending the Individualistic Fallacy in Archaeoastronomy by Considering Monument Design and Landscape Phenomenology as Coupled Systems
The dominant methodology in archaeoastronomy is the statistical testing of regional groups of monuments. Such tests for the null hypothesis cannot be used for unique monuments like Stonehenge and Avebury monument complexes in England, nor do they raise inquiry to the level of the meaning of these or even regional groups of monuments. To interpret the collective representations of the ancient monument builders an additional method for archaeoastronomy is to treat monument design and landscape context as a terrain of choices and, together with skyscape, as coupled systems. Competing models of meaning can then be tested by theoretically sampling these domains.
https://www.academia.edu/22251902/
Interpretation through emergence: reconstituting the lost complexity of the late
Neolithic/Early Bronze Age cosmovision by multi-disciplinary method.
PhD (by publication and production) Lionel Sims
University of East London, February 2013
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.568.1697&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road