Archaeoastronomy and Conflict: On the Orientation of Prehistoric Funerary Monuments in Western Sahara

Andrea Rodríguez-Antón (), Maitane Urrutia-Aparicio and María Antonia Perera Betancor
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Andrea Rodríguez-Antón: Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (INCIPIT-CSIC), 15707 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Maitane Urrutia-Aparicio: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Universidad de La Laguna, Calle Vía Láctea s/n, 38200 La Laguna, Spain
María Antonia Perera Betancor: Cultural Heritage of Canarias, Gobierno de Canarias, 38270 San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: A variety of Prehistoric dry-stone monuments are ubiquitous in Western Sahara, a region delimited by the boundaries of the former Spanish colony. With either burial or ritual functions, these monuments are spread throughout the Sahara Desert creating sacred landscapes and housing the memory of millennia of occupation. Previous research has explored the role of the sky in various aspects of the life of early inhabitants, such as their religious beliefs or funerary practices. These have been identified by the patterns of location and orientation of these constructions and their relation to particular astronomical events. This work presents a statistical analysis of the orientation of more than 200 prehistoric dry-stone monuments in Western Sahara occupied by Morocco, currently the biggest sample ever studied in this area and the first unique sample obtained in situ. The results show that the orientations follow similar trends observed in other areas of North Africa and the Mediterranean and that they fit with the visibility of particular celestial objects. This provides new insights into the ideas about space, time, and death and the cultural changes and mobility of those peoples and contributes to the preservation of a highly threatened heritage that is immersed in a vast land currently under dispute.

Keywords: archaeoastronomy; cultural astronomy; archaeology of Western Sahara; threatened heritage; North Africa prehistory; funerary archaeology; archaeology of North Africa; dry-stone monuments; sacred landscapes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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