Exploring Ancient Skies - An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy by David H Kelley & Eugene F Milone (2002).pdf

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Exploring Ancient Skies
 
David H. Kelley Eugene F. Milone
Exploring Ancient Skies
An Encyclopedic Survey of
Archaeoastronomy
Foreword by Anthony F. Aveni
With 392 Figures, 8 in Full Color, and 95 Tables
13
 
David H. Kelley
Eugene F. Milone
Professor Emeritus, Department of
Professor, Department of Physics
Archaeology
and Astronomy
The University of Calgary
The University of Calgary
2500 University Drive, NW
2500 University Drive, NW
Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4
Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4
Canada
Canada
milone@ucalgary.ca
Cover illustration: Background image (also appearing on the spine and back cover)—Photographic print
obtained from J. Greene-Smith and reproduced with permission; see Figure 10.7 for further description.
Smaller images, from left to right—Photo by E.F. Milone; see Figure 3.21 for further description.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin photograph reproduced from Humann and Puchstein [Fig. XL, Vol. II
(Plates), 1883/1890] by D. Stone; see Figure 15.3 for further description. Photo by E.F. Milone; see Figure
3.24 for further description. Photo by Dr. A.R.F. Williams; see Figure 9.2 for further description. Photo
by Dr. R. Angione; see Figure 12.19a for further description. RAO photo archives due to Dr. Rita
Boreiko; see Figure 5.13 for further description.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelley, David H.
Exploring ancient skies: an encyclopedic survey of archaeoastronomy/David H. Kelley, Eugene F.
Milone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-387-95310-8 (alk. paper)
1. Astronomy, Ancient. I. Milone, E.F., 1939– II. Title.
QB16.K45 2002
520
.93—dc21
2001032842
ISBN 0-387-95310-8
Printed on acid-free paper.
Business Media, Inc.
All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written
permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., 233 Spring Street, New York, NY
10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connec-
tion with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden.
The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are
not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject
to proprietary rights.
+
Printed in the United States of America.
(BS/MVY)
987654321
SPIN 10659592
springeronline.com
¢
© 2005 Springer Science
 
Foreword
A third-millennium academic cliché worth repeating is that the questions we pose and
the problems we now attempt to solve seem to have the effect of blurring the lines that
demarcate the traditional disciplines. This is true not only among the sciences, in which
universities now routinely offer interdepartmental courses in biophysics, neuropsychol-
ogy, and astrogeology, but also across the traditional academic divisions of science, social
science, and the humanities. The study of ancient astronomies is a perfect example of
the latter case. Once partitioned into the traditional history of astronomy , which dealt
exclusively with the underpinnings of Western scientific astronomy, and its upstart
adopted child archaeoastronomy , which treated all other world cultures, it has now been
subsumed by cultural astronomy , which, in addition, envelops the astronomical practices
of living cultures.
The problems treated in Exploring Ancient Skies are as follows: What did ancient
people see in the sky that mattered to them? How did they interpret what they saw?
Precisely what knowledge did they acquire from looking at the sky, and to what ends
did they employ this knowledge? In short, what were they up to and why?
You hold in your hand a weighty tome, the product of an enduring collaboration
between a pair of seasoned veterans: one an observational astronomer of great exper-
tise, and the other an archaeologist/epigrapher, well known among his Mesoamerican
colleagues for his significant contributions to the problem of decipherment of ancient
Maya script. What an ideal blend of expertise to produce a true interdisciplinary syn-
thesis that treats the problems posed by these engaging and complex questions! Explor-
ing Ancient Skies combines a deep and thorough treatment of relevant empirical
naked-eye astronomy with sweeping cultural coverage from peoples of the Arctic to
Oceania, from the unwritten astronomy encoded in ancient standing stones to what
would become the platform on which Western astronomical tradition yet rests.
Daring in the presentation of some of its hypotheses and somewhat unorthodox in
the treatment of certain long-standing problems, Exploring Ancient Skies may cause
some scholars to bristle, for example, at the readings of certain pages of the Maya
codices, the treatment of the calendar correlation problem, the universality of world
ages, and the diffusion of astronomical ideas and concepts both north-south and east-
west. But a foreword is not a review. Let any reader’s reactions not diminish an appre-
ciation of the way Kelley and Milone have delivered fresh knowledge and created a
challenging synthetic approach that can only derive from years of experience in a variety
of related fields.
Will Exploring Ancient Skies help solve our problems? Only time will tell. Seminal
progress in the development of all fields of scholarship depends on our capacity to listen
and to learn the lesson of history.
Hamilton, New York
Anthony F. Aveni
Russell B. Colgate Professor of
Astronomy and Anthropology
v
 

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