The architecture of public monuments, great and small, can give the archaeologist important clues about the worldviews of those who built them. One reason is that their designs may reflect the perceived cosmos, revealing associations that existed in the minds of the builders, just as the solar alignment at the passage tomb of Newgrange in Ireland reveals a perceived connection between the sun and the ancestors.
Monumental architecture may also reflect a ritually defined order of things that was relatively widespread and relatively stable, even where the nature of the society at the time was constantly changing in other ways. It is easy to see how existing monuments may have helped reinforce the perceived order of things, since they created an indelible mark on the landscape that was bound to have influenced future worldviews—if this is how the ancestors did things, people would surely have thought, then this is how we must do things too. Conversely, fundamental changes in ideology may indicate major social disruption.
This inherent stability oí the perceived world order means that associations of ideological and cosmological significance have a greater chance of leaving their mark on the material record, and thus have a greater chance ofbeing detectable by modern archaeologies, than many other, more volatile aspects of a past society. The reason is that we can expect them to be repeated over and over again. A single association, such as the solstitial alignment at Newgrange, may have meant nothing at all to the builders; it may have arisen entirely fortuitously. But it we see other, similar solstitial alignments repeated again and again, then the likelihood that they could have arisen fortuitously is rapidly diminished.
Where we find significant numbers of monuments with similar designs, similar orientation, and even consistent patterns of astronomical alignment, we can be confident that common practices prevailed over a considerable area and time.Throughout Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe we find discernible traditions of monument construction operating at various levels and scales. Some of these are remarkably widespread in space and time. In Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, for example, a propensity to build circular and linear ceremonial monuments resulted in the construction of many hundreds of stone circles and stone rows over as long as two millennia. Patterns of orientation rend to be more localized, and patterns of astronomical orientation more so still.
For example, among the recumbent stone circles, a group of stone circles of a particular form found in northeastern Scotland, and among the short stone rows of southwestern Ireland, there appear to he more specific traditions of orientation upon prominent features in the landscape or rising or setting positions of the sun or moon than in the larger area.
Reference : Ancient astronomy: an encyclopedia of cosmologies and myth De Clive L. N. Ruggles
Monumental architecture may also reflect a ritually defined order of things that was relatively widespread and relatively stable, even where the nature of the society at the time was constantly changing in other ways. It is easy to see how existing monuments may have helped reinforce the perceived order of things, since they created an indelible mark on the landscape that was bound to have influenced future worldviews—if this is how the ancestors did things, people would surely have thought, then this is how we must do things too. Conversely, fundamental changes in ideology may indicate major social disruption.
This inherent stability oí the perceived world order means that associations of ideological and cosmological significance have a greater chance of leaving their mark on the material record, and thus have a greater chance ofbeing detectable by modern archaeologies, than many other, more volatile aspects of a past society. The reason is that we can expect them to be repeated over and over again. A single association, such as the solstitial alignment at Newgrange, may have meant nothing at all to the builders; it may have arisen entirely fortuitously. But it we see other, similar solstitial alignments repeated again and again, then the likelihood that they could have arisen fortuitously is rapidly diminished.
Where we find significant numbers of monuments with similar designs, similar orientation, and even consistent patterns of astronomical alignment, we can be confident that common practices prevailed over a considerable area and time.Throughout Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe we find discernible traditions of monument construction operating at various levels and scales. Some of these are remarkably widespread in space and time. In Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, for example, a propensity to build circular and linear ceremonial monuments resulted in the construction of many hundreds of stone circles and stone rows over as long as two millennia. Patterns of orientation rend to be more localized, and patterns of astronomical orientation more so still.
For example, among the recumbent stone circles, a group of stone circles of a particular form found in northeastern Scotland, and among the short stone rows of southwestern Ireland, there appear to he more specific traditions of orientation upon prominent features in the landscape or rising or setting positions of the sun or moon than in the larger area.
Reference : Ancient astronomy: an encyclopedia of cosmologies and myth De Clive L. N. Ruggles
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