Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. (context hypercorrect English) (alternative spelling of archaeastronomy English)
Wikipedia
Archaeoastronomy (also spelled archeoastronomy) is the study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky, how they used these phenomena and what role the sky played in their cultures." Clive Ruggles argues it is misleading to consider archaeoastronomy to be the study of ancient astronomy, as modern astronomy is a scientific discipline, while archaeoastronomy considers symbolically rich cultural interpretations of phenomena in the sky by other cultures. It is often twinned with ethnoastronomy, the anthropological study of skywatching in contemporary societies. Archaeoastronomy is also closely associated with historical astronomy, the use of historical records of heavenly events to answer astronomical problems and the history of astronomy, which uses written records to evaluate past astronomical practice.
Archaeoastronomy uses a variety of methods to uncover evidence of past practices including archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, statistics and probability, and history. Because these methods are diverse and use data from such different sources, integrating them into a coherent argument has been a long-term difficulty for archaeoastronomers. Archaeoastronomy fills complementary niches in landscape archaeology and cognitive archaeology. Material evidence and its connection to the sky can reveal how a wider landscape can be integrated into beliefs about the cycles of nature, such as Mayan astronomy and its relationship with agriculture. Other examples which have brought together ideas of cognition and landscape include studies of the cosmic order embedded in the roads of settlements.
Archaeoastronomy can be applied to all cultures and all time periods. The meanings of the sky vary from culture to culture; nevertheless there are scientific methods which can be applied across cultures when examining ancient beliefs. It is perhaps the need to balance the social and scientific aspects of archaeoastronomy which led Clive Ruggles to describe it as: "...[A] field with academic work of high quality at one end but uncontrolled speculation bordering on lunacy at the other."
Archaeoastronomy may refer to two different astronomy journals
- Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy in Culture , an American journal established in 1978, affiliated with the Center for Archaeoastronomy and the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture.
- Archaeoastronomy: Supplement to the Journal for the History of Astronomy , a supplement to the British journal Journal for the History of Astronomy established in 1979 which merged with the main journal in 2003.
Usage examples of "archaeoastronomy".
Virginia Lee Davis also makes the link between the Milky Way and the ‘Winding Waterway’ in Archaeoastronomy, Vol.
Virginia Lee Davis seems to be convinced about this in Archaeoastronomy, Vol.
In the last year, he'd learned more about astronomy than he ever thought he would, and he'd been to a lot of classes and meetings in archaeoastronomy, a growing branch of his own field.
And after hearing your presentation—which is quite good, by the way—and checking your credentials in archaeoastronomy— which aren't even in the same league as your archaeology credentials—I realized we had a twofold problem.