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The Value of Skyscape Archaeology

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The Value of Skyscape Archaeology FORUM The Value of Skyscape Archaeology Nicholas Campion University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK [email protected] The editors of the JSA have for the last five years been making valiant efforts to establish a new discipline, or at least, a new disciplinary term, “skyscape archaeology”, adding new energy to a half-century of consistent efforts to assert the sky’s importance in human culture. In this short contribution I would like to examine the background and limits, or lack of limits, to skyscape archaeology. It is as close to a fact as one can get to assert that in non-western and premodern worlds an intimate connection was assumed between humanity and the stars and planets. That this was so is asserted by all the key figures in the areas known alternatively either as archaeoastronomy or cultural astronomy. Clive Ruggles and Michael Hoskin (Ruggles and Hoskin 1999, 1) have written that “long before the invention of writing or the construction of observing instruments, the sky was a cultural resource among peoples throughout the world”. Ruggles (2011, 15) further argues that The sky is of universal importance. Cultural perceptions of the sky are vital in fulfilling humankind’s most basic need to comprehend the universe it inhabits, both from a modern scientific perspective and from countless other cultural standpoints, extending right back into early prehistory. I pointed out that connection with the sky is actually fundamental to our existence: [T]he sky should be included part of the natural environment. After all, it is actually at least half of the natural environment, measured by the visual area it covers. It is also pretty important. Without it we would die. There would be no sun, no heat, no light, and no fresh water from rain. We would exist in a frozen, pitch black, barren world. Or, actually, we would not exist at all. (Campion 2016, xxiii) Given that we exist, how do we exist? Among the many possible answers to this question is that we exist in culture; and as such, as Anthony Aveni (2008, 726–727) has argued, “the practice of observing and making sense of celestial phenomena is as much a cultural activity as any other, and consequently it is equally sensitive to the varied JSA 6.1 (2020) 94–97 ISSN (print) 2055-348X https://doi.org/10.1558/jsa.42311 ISSN (online) 2055-3498 The Value of Skyscape Archaeology 95 processes of culture change.” This statement is pretty radical when we examine it closely: if the interpretation of celestial phenomena is subject to cultural change, then modern scientific astronomy may be equally subject to such limitations. And as Steve McCluskey (2009) has observed, astronomy comes in multiple forms: Astronomy is any attempt to account for phenomena in the heavens. Sometimes these accounts are quantitatively descriptive, sometimes they’re mathematically predictive, sometimes they’re physically causal, and sometimes they’re even supernaturally causal. An awareness of the skyscape is therefore vital to an understanding of culture. And if this can include awareness of the supernatural, as Aveni argues, then this means not just the visible stars and planets, but angels and demons, gods and goddesses, along with various invisible forces and relationships, all of which exist in traditional skies. In many forms of astronomy, as in the classical world, the planets themselves have personalities, like people (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos). A full appreciation of the skyscape must take all these aspects into account. The only viable definition of the term “skyscape archaeology” is one that is as broad as possible. The skyscape is that part of our physical and experiential environment not included in the other two great scapes of our planet, the landscape and the seascape. This is in addition to the proliferation of other “scapes”, such as inscapes (Andrikopoulos 2018) and taskscapes (Tilley and Cameron-Daum 2017) – and even then, there is an unre- solved problem, for the notion of land, sea and sky, let alone inscapes and taskscapes as separate entities, is a product of modern reductionism. In Egyptian astronomy there are lakes in the sky, and in the Jewish model of the cosmos, as in the Aristotelian, part of the sky is solid. In Ptolemaic astronomy (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos) the planets and constellations map onto the Earth, and portions of the Earth and people possess shared identities with regions of the sky, there being no separation between sky, stars, planets and human physiology and psychology. We then need to look at the second word in the term, “archaeology”. I here do this by reference to the UK Quality Assurance Agency’s (QAA) benchmarking document on the study of archaeology at undergraduate level, the basis of all archaeology in UK academia. The second paragraph has a somewhat limited definition of archaeology, as “the study of the human past through material remains” (QAA 2014, 1.2, 6). This is fair enough and probably represents what most archaeoastronomers believe archaeology to be, given the limited nature of most studies in the area. However, the first paragraph has already created a much broader sweep, claiming that [a]rchaeology provides a unique perspective on the human past and on what it is to be human. As the only subject that deals with the entire human past in all its temporal and spatial dimensions, it is fundamental to our understanding of how we evolved, how our society and other societies came into being, and how they changed over time. (QAA 2014, 1.2, 6) Somewhat imperialistically, the document then claims that archaeology provides more of a universal study of the past than does history, for unlike history it includes scientific © 2020 EQUINOX PUBLISHING LTD 96 Nicholas Campion methodologies. Such disciplinary arrogance aside, the notion of material objects in isolation as if they exist in themselves without any other relationship is not tenable. Such an exercise is pointless unless these artefacts are identified and understood through a process of interpretation. Their application, origins, use, function and financial, emotional or psychological value, significance and symbolism can only be gleaned through a combi- nation of the widest use of disciplines from the sciences to the humanities and the arts. The QAA makes some concession in this direction by admitting that archaeology is often studied alongside other subjects (QAA 2014, 1.6, 6) drawn from the arts, social sciences and sciences, and also when it asserts that “[t]he archaeology graduate is extremely well equipped with transferable skills, from the mix of humanities and science training, engage- ment with theory and practice” (QAA 2014, 1.9, 7). Quite simply, the skyscape archaeologist must also be equipped with these skills, which may incorporate knowledge of such subjects and disciplines as the study of religions, including notions of ritual and sacred space; history, including the history of ideas, art and science; and anthropology, including such notions as phenomenology and current concerns such as the ontological turn. It may include notions of discourses and narratives taken from Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge (Foucault 2002 [1969]) or engagement with modern technology, such as in the archaeology of the space race (Gorman 2009). It may be impossible for any one individual to have a complete interdisciplinary specialism, but it is necessary at least to have an awareness of the mix which the QAA requires, crossing geography, culture and chronology from the ancient word to the modern. This is exactly what the JSA sets out to achieve: Skyscape archaeology moves beyond the approaches used in the past by ensuring research is infused with much needed theoretical and methodological reflexivity, along with an emphasis on socio-cultural contextualisation and immersion. By reassessing past and present assumptions as well as bringing together cutting edge research, regardless of period or culture, JSA provides a shared cross-disciplinary forum for skyscape archaeology which fosters collaborations, debate and innovation”. (Journal of Skyscape Archaeology 2020) This is sustained, as I have shown, by the academic requirements for the rigorous study of archaeology. References Aveni, A., 2008. Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Andrikopoulos, L., 2018. “Inscapes: Introducing a New Term to Cultural Astronomy”. Culture and Cosmos 22 (2): 3–15. Campion, N., 2016. “Preface: Welling and Dark Skies”. In Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark, by A. Blair, xvii–xxvii. Lampeter: Sophia Centre Press. Foucault, M., 2002 [1969]. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Gorman, A., 2009. “The Archaeology of Space Exploration”. Sociological Review 57 (1): 132–145. Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 2020. “Journal of Skyscape Archaeology” [online]. Accessed February 2020, https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JSA McCluskey, S., 2009. “‘Is Astronomy the Oldest Science?”, 6th April [email to History of Astronomy Discussion Group]. © 2020 EQUINOX PUBLISHING LTD The Value of Skyscape Archaeology 97 Ruggles, C., 2011. “Pushing Back the Frontiers or Still Running Around the Same Circles? ‘Interpretative Archaeoastronomy’ Thirty Years On”. In Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges Between Cultures. “Oxford IX” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy, edited by C. L. N. Ruggles, 1–19. Special issue of Proceedings of International Astronomy Union 7 (S278): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s1743921311012427 Ruggles, C. and M. Hoskin, 1999. “Astronomy Before History”. In The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, edited by M. Hoskin, 1–17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. QAA [Quality Assurance Agency], 2014. UK Quality Code for Higher Education, Subject Benchmark Statement, Archaeology [online]. Accessed January 2020, https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject-benchmark- statements/sbs-archaeology-14.pdf Tilley, C. and K. Cameron-Daum, 2017. An Anthropology of Landscape: The Extraordinary in the Ordinary. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1mtz542 © 2020 EQUINOX PUBLISHING LTD.
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