Related papers: Astronomical Orientations of Bora Ceremonial Groun…
Parts of Australia have been privileged to see dazzling lights in the night sky as the Aurora Australis (known as the southern lights) puts on a show this year. Aurorae are significant in Australian Indigenous astronomical traditions.…
Prehistoric sanctuaries of Daunia date back several thousand years. During the Neolithic and Bronze Age the farmers in that region dug hypogea and holes whose characteristics suggest a ritual use. In the present note we summarize the…
A major focus of the archaeoastronomical research conducted around the world focuses on understanding how ancient cultures observed sunrise and sunset points along the horizon, particularly at the solstices and equinoxes. Scholars argue…
Transient celestial phenomena feature prominently in the astronomical knowledge and traditions of Aboriginal Australians. In this paper, I collect accounts of the Aurora Australis from the literature regarding Aboriginal culture. Using…
Australian Indigenous astronomical traditions hint at a relationship between animals in the skyworld and the behaviour patterns of their terrestrial counterparts. In our continued study of Aboriginal astronomical traditions from the Great…
Traditional Aboriginal Australian cultures include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition and ceremony. This knowledge has practical navigational and calendrical functions, and sometimes extends to a deep…
We agree with the interpretation of W. Schlosser, that the Nebra Sky Disc is a reminder of a method of determining a start date (and possibly also an end date) of the farming year. We extend this interpretation. We think that we found the…
We test the hypothesis that Aboriginal linear stone arrangements in New South Wales (NSW) are oriented to cardinal directions. We accomplish this by measuring the azimuths of stone arrangements described in site cards from the NSW…
In this work we employ the methods of archaeoastronomy to analyze the orientation, possibly astronomical, of numerous groups of chullpa funerary towers, mainly from the 12th to 16th centuries, located in the Lauca River valley of the…
Our location in the Milky Way provides an exceptional opportunity to gain insight on the galactic evolution processes, and complement the information inferred from observations of external galaxies. Since the Milky Way is a barred galaxy,…
Daunia is a region in northern Apulia with many interesting archaeological sites, particularly of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Beginning from the fifth millennium BC, the farmers living in the wide plain of Daunia dug hypogea and holes in…
For more than 50,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated celestial events into their oral traditions and used the motions of celestial bodies for navigation, time-keeping, food economics, and social structure. In this paper, we…
The oral traditions of Aboriginal cultures across Australia contain references to the presence of multiple Suns in the sky at the same time. Explanations of this have been largely regarded as symbolic or mythological, rather than…
Early ethnographers and missionaries recorded Aboriginal languages and oral traditions across Australia. Their general lack of astronomical training resulted in misidentifications, transcription errors, and omissions in these records.…
In spite of much work, the overall spiral structure morphology of the Milky Way remains somewhat uncertain. In the last two decades, accurate distance measurements have provided us with an opportunity to solve this issue. Using the precise…
Wurdi Youang is an egg-shaped Aboriginal stone arrangement in Victoria, Australia. Here we present a new survey of the site, and show that its major axis is aligned within a few degrees of east-west. We confirm a previous hypothesis that it…
The third column of the left row in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome, has a hole carved in it, of probable astronomical use. The tube aims at a point a 116 degrees of azimut, East-South-East and 17.3 degrees of altitude, the…
The Nabateans built several monuments in Petra and elsewhere displaying a decoration with a preference for astronomical motifs, possibly as a reflection of their religion. However, due to the lack of direct written accounts and the scarcity…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, which is usually reported in terms of songs or stories associated with stars and constellations. Here we argue that the astronomical components…
Whilst camped at Ooldea, South Australia, between 1919 and 1935, the amateur anthropologist Daisy Bates CBE (1859-1951) recorded the daily lives, lore, and oral traditions of the Aboriginal people of the Great Victoria Desert region…