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Archaeocosmology disciplines

• Mythical information
These are based on oral traditions and have a tendency to incorporate not only the start of an object/event/person but also the evolution of this. In archaeocosmology we are interested in both I think: the start of something (a festival for something, a building and why it was build, etc.) and the evolution in time (e.g. former churches are now used as
restaurant).
Both are important, but we have to keep them separated to gain a clear overall picture. This separation could be difficult with myths, but we have to stimulate to get this straighten out in some way.
• Phenomenology
Observations are determining this (instead of theories). You can mix them of course, but the observations are primarily in phenomenology.
• Religion
Religion keeps a lot of issues preserved (or destroyed of course). It is finding the undestroyed things which is important in this study.
• Astronomy
This provides input on the paths the celestial objects make in the sky and in relation to the earth in former times. A good understanding is needed of this behavior. In principle this is a very predictive database. If possible celestial alignments are present in buildings this because important.
The observation with the unaided eye should be stimulated. A lot can be seen in the sky without many tools or theory.
• Archaeology
In principle archaeology should be able to provide us with unbiased data. I say in principle, because practice is of course not always so. Things are bend according to the insight of the researcher (which happens with all the other mentioned research by the way!!!). Perhaps the bending is not so problematic (if it can be reconstructed), it is more problematic if things were NOT investigated, because they were thought not important (like a lot of alignments are destroyed, because no attention was paid to them).
Archaeology has provided in any way lots of baised/unbaised data which can be used for archaeocosmology studies.
Education of the archaeology world is needed to make it more unbiased to archaeocosmology issues (like done in Ruggles [1999]).
• Statistics
Statistics is a very tricky study. You can do very good things with it, but you can also distort things (figures don't tell everything!).
Furthermore you can only do statistics on a sample that has lots of things in common, but one thing (or at least a very limited number of things) perhaps not. With statistics one want to prove that that one thing is there or not there (hypothesis). But when is one sure that one has a good sample e.g. the buildings have to be from the same culture/tribe/etc. otherwise comparing becomes very difficult.
Another thing is blurred out with statistics and that is the uniqueness of something! In present days e.g. most buildings in a culture are ordinary, only a few are special and have something unique (I called them the cathedrals). If you use the wrong statistics you will never see the special ones!
I personally would like to concentrate on finding techniques to try to find these special ones and not loose them in averages.
• Surveying and geodesy
The use of GPS, GIS (like 3D emulation of the environment and submerging a a virtual world) can help to visualize the study of archaeocosmology do determine alignments based on geographical/tribal phenomena. Some examples can be seen on my work at Maeshowe and tutorial web pages on surveying.
• Art and artifacts
Art from former times can have lots of meanings. It can be used for noting, tallying, writing, art, initiation, ceremony, etc. One should be able to get an idea how to interpretate these art objects in such a way that we can use them in the archaeocosmology studies.
Art is my main interest. I diverted to the surveying/statistics/astronomy issues temporarily, because I hope that
these can provide more context to the art. I still don't know if this is/was the correct path for me;-)
• Climate studies
It is important to know how the climate (and the level of sea) was in the time periods we are investigating.
• alternative (or not yet accepted?) ways of thinking
Ley lines, dowsing, earth energy stars, etc. could be useful for archaeocosmology. We have to be aware though that we know what and how we are using it. We also have to be sure that e.g. ley lines are not altered by time (e.g. rivers change their paths quiet considerable over 5000 years why not lay lines or underground waterways).
So we have to use these ways of thinking and evaluate them for the use in archaeocosmology.
• Anthropology
This is of course an important discipline. Analogies could help in understanding megalithic people.
• Acoustics
Acoustic of buildings can be very powerful, certainly if you have been standing e.g. in Treasury of Atreus and heard a choir singing! Sounds can thus be very powerful in rites and ceremonies. A study worth for archaeocosmology in my opinion.
• More???
Please send me an e-mail!!!

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