The Enigma of Minor Standstills

Abstract

For many decades it has been an unrelenting puzzle in cultural astronomy how such an obscure and elusive phenomenon as minor lunar standstill could have been of interest to ancient societies. Its declination has become part of the “tool kit” of cultural astronomy, often regardless of whether minor standstills had any cultural meaning. In his discussion of minor standstill, Lionel Sims has developed a theory for the meaning of minor standstill in Neolithic cultures, using Stonehenge as a test bed for alternative models. Sims draws upon the theory of dark/new Moon seclusion rituals linked metaphorically to death, blood, and rebirth developed by Knight (1991). A basic element of Knight’s theory is that hunter-gatherer women organized sex strikes and controlled their menstrual cycles to force men into sharing meat from the large game animals they had procured. Sims uses Knight’s model of lunar scheduling of hunting, feasting, menstruation, and sex to support his own ideas about minor lunar standstills at Stonehenge. In his model the dark Moon signalled an onset of sex strikes and was a time for celebratory dancing and singing. Unfortunately, Knight’s assertions about sexual divisions of labour among hunter-gatherers and the restricted access by women to food resources is not confirmed by ethnographic or ethnohistoric studies (Brumbach and Jarvenpa 2006). Hunter-gatherer women had direct access to small game, fish shellfish, eggs, amphibians, and insects and have no problem in acquiring protein. They did not need to rely upon male hunters and big game. In societies where women handle the processing, preservation, and management of stored foods, women may actually have greater access to a variety of food supplies than do men. It is significant that hunter-gatherer women in general have better nutrition than agricultural women. Brumbach and Jarvenpa criticize anthropological theories such as that of Knight: