Archaeoastronomy: A Sustainable Way to Grasp the Skylore of Past Societies

Antonio César González-García and Juan Antonio Belmonte
Additional contact information
Antonio César González-García: Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, Incipit, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Avda. de Vigo s/n, 15705 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Juan Antonio Belmonte: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias & Universidad de La Laguna, Calle Vía Láctea s/n, 38200 La Laguna, Spain

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: If astronomy can be understood as the contemplation of the sky for any given purpose, we must realize that possibly all societies throughout time and in all regions have watched the sky. The why, who, how and when of such investigation is the pursuit of cultural astronomy. When the research is done with the archaeological remains of a given society, the part of cultural astronomy that deals with them is archaeoastronomy. This interdisciplinary field employs non-invasive techniques that mix methodologies of the natural sciences with the epistemology of humanities. Those techniques are reviewed here, providing an excellent example of sustainable research. In particular, we include novel research on the Bohí Valley Romanesque churches. The results provided go beyond the data. This is because they add new value to existing heritage or discovers new heritage due to the possible relationship to the spatial and temporal organization of past societies. For the case of the Bohí churches the results point to a number of peculiarities of these churches in a valley in the Pyrenees. This links these aspects to the ritual, practical and power sphere of past societies. A wonderful example of such links is the high mountain sanctuaries in Gran Canaria, where archaeoastronomy helps promoting a World Heritage candidacy.

Keywords: cultural astronomy; archaeoastronomy; field techniques; Bohí Romanesque churches; Canary Islands; landscape archaeology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2240/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2240/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:8:p:2240-:d:222649

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().