Beyond Paradigms in Cultural Astronomy. Proceedings of the 27th SEAC conference held together with the EAA

Proceedings of the 27th SEAC conference held together with the EAA.-- Editors: A. César González-García, Roslyn M. Frank, Lionel D. Sims, Michael A. Rappenglück, Georg Zotti, Juan A. Belmonte, Ivan Šprajc.Cultural Astronomy is the endeavour to understand the role of the sky in past and present societies, and how these societies incorporated the sky into their culture. This broad ranging discipline is closely related to archaeology when investigating material remains of the past. Cultural Astronomy also explores the role of the heavens from the perspectives of the anthropological sciences. In recent decades the discipline has been concerned with methodological and theoretical issues. This volume offers chapters based on presentations at the 27th SEAC meeting held in Bern (2019). These chapters provide a vivid image of front-line research in diverse areas, from Roman light and shadow effects to highlight power, to Maya city organization, Etruscan temple orientation or the ontology of the sky.Peer reviewe

East or Easter? Keys to the orientation of Romanesque churches along the Way of Saint James

The pilgrimage along the Way of Saint James constituted the principal mechanism for the introduction of new currents of thought into the Iberian Peninsula, such as Romanesque architecture. Taking this into account, we examined whether the standard tradition on the orientation of Christian churches was followed. We measured the orientation of 108 churches built between the end of the 10th and 13th centuries near the French Way, in the ancient kingdoms of Leon and Castile. The statistical analysis shows a clear tendency to orientate the apse of the church eastwards, specifically slightly to the north of due east. Furthermore, we found that the orientation patterns differ from one kingdom to the other. In Leon, there seems to be a predilection for the local tradition of aligning the apse toward the ecclesiastical equinox. Castile, in contrast, built their churches orientated to Easter, one of the most important feast days of Christianity

Land-and Skyscapes of the Camino de Santiago: An Astronomy and World Heritage Sustainable Approach

The Romanesque churches dotted along the Way of Saint James are magnificent examples of cultural heritage, and their analysis from the perspective of cultural astronomy may, in an unobtrusive manner, provide information of hitherto unexplored facets of these treasures. This study aims to examine the pilgrimage road as a communication channel and to seek possible regional variations in the Christian kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon. Seen as a whole, the Romanesque churches of our sample present two main orientation patterns: towards either the ecclesiastical and astronomical equinox or to certain Easter Sunday celestial phenomena. However, equinoctial orientations are present only in Leon and Navarre, while Easter appears with more or less significance in every kingdom. The Camino de Santiago constitutes a sacred landscape with a common heritage, with a certain degree of cultural diversity that depends on the territory. These subtle differences have surfaced only in light of archaeoastronomical investigations.This research was funded by the State Research Agency (AEI), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grants with references AYA2015-66787-P ‘Orientatio ad Sidera IV’, PID2020-115940GB-C21, PID2020-115940GB-C22 ’Orientatio ad Sidera V’ and under the internal IAC project P310793 ‘Arqueoastronomía’ and it is part of the project EIN2020-112463, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100022033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR”.Peer reviewe

Ad orientem: Las iglesias románicas del Camino Francés en los reinos de Castilla y León bajo la perspectiva de la Astronomía Cultural

This paper examines whether the Romanesque churches of the Way of Saint James or Camino de Santiago follow a common orientation pattern from the perspective of Cultural Astronomy. In order to do so, the orientation of 191 Romanesque churches in the former kingdoms of Leon and Castile has been obtained and a comparative study has been carried out. Both kingdoms share the orientation toward the sunrise on Easter Sunday, probably obtained by direct observation of the Sun over the horizon. However, Leon shows a strong preference for the ecclesiastical equinox of March 21, which does not appear in Castile. Churches belonging to the Way and a contrast sample at each kingdom have been also compared, providing relevant information about some churches built at specific places such as Santiago de Compostela, Ribeira Sacra, Sahagún or the Montaña Palentina.En este trabajo se examina, desde la perspectiva de la Astronomía Cultural, si las iglesias románicas del Camino de Santiago siguen un patrón de orientación común a todas ellas. Para ello, se ha obtenido la orientación de 191 templos en los antiguos reinos de León y Castilla, y se ha realizado un estudio comparativo. Ambos reinos comparten orientaciones hacia la salida del sol el domingo de Pascua, probablemente obtenidas en su mayoría mediante observación directa del sol sobre el horizonte, aunque León presenta una fuerte preferencia por el equinoccio eclesiástico del 21 de marzo, que no aparece en Castilla. También se han analizado las iglesias pertenecientes al Camino y una muestra de contraste en cada reino, lo que ha permitido extraer información relevante sobre las iglesias construidas en lugares concretos como Santiago de Compostela, la Ribeira Sacra, Sahagún o la Montaña Palentin

Archaeoastronomy and Conflict: On the Orientation of Prehistoric Funerary Monuments in Western Sahara

This article belongs to the Special Issue Sacred Landscapes and Astronomical Heritage.A variety of Prehistoric dry-stone monuments are ubiquitous in Western Sahara, a region delimited by the boundaries of the former Spanish colony. With either burial or ritual functions, these monuments are spread throughout the Sahara Desert creating sacred landscapes and housing the memory of millennia of occupation. Previous research has explored the role of the sky in various aspects of the life of early inhabitants, such as their religious beliefs or funerary practices. These have been identified by the patterns of location and orientation of these constructions and their relation to particular astronomical events. This work presents a statistical analysis of the orientation of more than 200 prehistoric dry-stone monuments in Western Sahara occupied by Morocco, currently the biggest sample ever studied in this area and the first unique sample obtained in situ. The results show that the orientations follow similar trends observed in other areas of North Africa and the Mediterranean and that they fit with the visibility of particular celestial objects. This provides new insights into the ideas about space, time, and death and the cultural changes and mobility of those peoples and contributes to the preservation of a highly threatened heritage that is immersed in a vast land currently under dispute.This research was funded by the State Research Agency (AEI), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grants with references AYA2015-66787-P ‘Orientatio ad Sidera IV’, PID2020-115940GB-C21, PID2020-115940GB-C22 ’Orientatio ad Sidera V’ and under the internal IAC project P310793 ‘Arqueoastronomía’ and it is part of the project EIN2020-112463, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100022033 and by the European Union “NextGenerationEU”/PRTR”.Peer reviewe

Land‑ and Skyscapes of Hegra: An Archaeoastronomical Analysis of the Nabataean Necropoleis

The archaeological World Heritage Site of Hegra (Mada´in Salih, Al-Hijr), in Saudi Arabia, is often considered the southern capital of the Nabataean Kingdom. Positioned just northeast of the AlUla Valley (where ancient Dadan is located), the Nabataeans recreated several aspects of their northern capital, Petra. They carved more than 130 tombs into the sandstone outcrops of which nearly a hundred had a monumental character with ornate façades of exceptional beauty and deep sense of enduring. In February 2023, our international, multidisciplinary research team conducted a feld campaign in Hegra. Our objective was to measure the orientation of Nabataean tombs and sanctuaries in the area, which could ofer new clues to aspects of Nabataean culture and religion that we had studied in earlier works at Petra, and elsewhere in Nabataea. This paper includes the analysis and interpretation of the data on the orientation of 113 tombs, including all monumental ones, the largest coherent set of Nabataean tombs ever analyzed. The results show that the tombs were not randomly orientated but followed a series of patterns, most probably emphasizing the skyscape, within the framework of the Nabataean lunisolar calendar religious festivals, and, on occasions, also the local landscape.Sin financiación0.5 Q3 JCR 20220.358 Q1 SJR 2023No data IDR 2022UE