Abstract
Archaeoastronomy is still a marginalised topic in academia and is described by the Sophia Centre, the only UK institution offering a broader MA containing this field, as ‘the study of the incorporation of celestial orientation, alignments or symbolism in human monuments and architecture’. By many it is associated with investigating prehistoric monuments such as Stonehenge and combining astronomy and archaeology. The following will show that archaeoastronomy is far more than just an interdisciplinary field linking archaeology and astronomy. It merges aspects of anthropology, ethno-astronomy and even educational research, and is possibly better described as cultural astronomy. In the past decades it has stepped away from its quite speculative beginnings that have led to its complete rejection by the archaeology community. Overcoming these challenges it embraced full heartedly solid scientific and statistical methodology and achieved more credibility. However, in recent times the humanistic influences of a cultural context motivate a new generation of archaeoastronomers that are modernising this subject; and humanists might find it better described as post-modern archaeoastronomy embracing the pluralism of today's academic approach to landscape and ancient people.
Highlights
In the first instance Archaeoastronomy is a word created by combining archaeology and astronomy
While introducing the notion of a modernised archaeoastronomy, the author has given some attempts at outlining what the term archaeoastronomy means, including its description as cultural astronomy and skyscape archaeology
Stonehenge was used as a blueprint towards understanding archaeoastronomy and highlighting some of the challenges the discipline has faced in its past and is still struggling with, mentioning for example that alignments are by themselves meaningless pointers towards an abstract declination and need to be filled with astronomical meaning
Summary
In the first instance Archaeoastronomy is a word created by combining archaeology and astronomy As such this subject area might initially be described as involving the comprehension of stars, Sun and the Moon as they move through the sky from the perspective of an astronomer using the material remains of people whose culture can be described as ancient and that does not exist anymore. It will appear to set behind the centre of Stonehenge at midwinter when walking along the avenue Discovering and exploring such astronomically motivated alignments is the brief of archaeoastronomy.
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