Megalithic astronomy: The last five years

Abstract

Until recently, megalithic astronomy too often consisted merely of seeking out specific examples of astronomical alignments at particular sites and laying great emphasis upon them. Too little attention was paid to the question of whether the alignments could have arisen through factors quite unrelated to astronomy, and also to wider archaeological evidence about the sites involved. In recent years a more critical approach has emerged, both in discussions of individual sites and in statistical studies of groups of sites. Interdisciplinary collaboration has become more common, involving workers trained in the numerate sciences and those in the humanities. As a result, we are just beginning to see more reliable conclusions about astronomical observations in ancient times, and to see them interpreted in the context of current archaeological thought. At last, it seems, archaeoastronomy in Britain is starting to produce results of genuine interest to archaeologists and historians of astronomy alike. This paper attempts to review developments in megalithic astronomy since 1979 and to examine the topic in the wider contexts of world archaeoastronomy and of archaeology and anthropology in general.