If we are interested in how human societies perceive the sky, as opposed to what modern physics and astronomy can tell us about the universe, then it is how the sky appears rather than how it actually is that is important. Thinking in terms of the celestial sphere enables us to define a number of fundamental concepts that are extremely useful in discussing ancient skies.
For example, on this rotating sphere we can identify an equator and two poles. The latter are called the north and south celestial poles, and they are directly overhead as viewed from the north and south poles respectively on the earth. More generally, and most usefully, we can define lines of latitude (declination) and longitude (right ascension), which allow us to specify the position of any star on the sphere.
See also:
Declination; How the Sky Has Changed over the Centuries; Lunar Parallax; Precession.
References and further reading
Aveni, Anthony F. Skywatchers, 49–57. Austin: University of Texas Press,
2001.
Krupp, Edwin C. Echoes of the Ancient Skies, 3–6. Oxford: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1983.
Celtic Calendar
The concept of a Celtic calendar that divided the year into eight precisely equal parts, marked by festivals on the solstices, equinoxes, and mid-quarter days, has influenced archaeoastronomy for decades and does so still, in that many people continue to perceive monumental alignments upon sunrise or sunset on the equinoxes or mid-quarter days as inherently significant. Certainly pre-Christian calendrical festivals existed, such as Imbolc, Beltaine, Lughnasa, and Samhain (celebrated in modern pagan traditions at the beginning of February, May, August, and November, respectively), and continued to be important, for example, in early medieval Ireland. However, we should not accept uncritically the notions that their precursors were both widespread within Iron Age Europe and precisely determined. The whole concept of Celtic culture is now generally felt to be problematic, with many archaeologists arguing that it has more to do with modern perceptions of ethnicity than with historical or archaeological evidence of any widespread conformity between cultures in the European Iron Age. Given these uncertainties, the idea of a precise and all-pervasive Celtic calendar must be treated with considerable caution.
Nonetheless, there are indications that a precise division of the year into eight parts, based on observations of the sun, might have existed in pre-Roman times. Chief among these is the Coligny calendar, a bronze tablet about 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters (five feet by three feet) in size (though found in fragments, some of which were missing) dating to the second century C.E. It is a public calendar covering five years, with dates and festivals marked, and it is luni-solar in character: a late remnant of an indigenous calendar from the pre-Roman world. Lunar months alternating between twenty-nine and thirty days, and even intercalary months, are marked; but so, too, are dates that recur once every three months or so, each mysteriously marked “PRINI LAG” or something similar. These dates occur at intervals of ninety-one, ninety-three, ninety-one, and ninety-two days—intervals of almost exactly one quarter of the year (which has 367 days in the Coligny calendar). It has been suggested that they actually mark Celtic quarter-day festivals.
Regardless of the “Celticity” of the indigenous calendar in this region of southern Gaul (the calendar was discovered about eighty kilometers [fifty miles] from Lyon), the vital question is whether it provides solid evidence for a pre-Roman calendar in which the main seasonal festivals were timed by counting off exact numbers of days in the solar year. In view of the fact that the indigenous calendar concerned was clearly lunar-based, this seems very unlikely. Perhaps the regular intervals were introduced as part of the process of making the existing calendar conform to the Roman system.
See also:
Christianization of “Pagan” Festivals; Lunar and Luni-Solar Calendars;
“Megalithic” Calendar; Equinoxes; Mid-Quarter Days.
Beltany; Boyne Valley Tombs.
Solstices.
References and further reading
Collis, John. The European Iron Age. London: Routledge, 1997. Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Gibson, Alex, and Derek Simpson, eds. Prehistoric Ritual and Religion: Es
says in Honour of Aubrey Burl, 190–202. Stroud: Sutton, 1998. Hutton, Ron. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain,
218–225, 327–331, 360–370. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention?
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. King, John. The Celtic Druids’ Year: Seasonal Cycles of the Ancient Celts.
London: Blandford, 1994.
Le Contel, Jean-Michel, and Paul Verdier. Un Calendrier Celtique: Le Calendrier Gaulois de Coligny. Paris: Йditions Errance, 1997. [In French.]
McCluskey, Stephen C. Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, 54–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Olmsted, Garrett. The Gaulish Calendar. Bonn: Habelt, 1992.
Ruggles, Clive. Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 142, 159. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Ruggles, Clive, and Nicholas Saunders, eds. Astronomies and Cultures, 102–109. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993.
System The capital of the Inca empire, Cusco (or Cuzco), was at the heart of a huge scheme of sacred geography. At the very center was the Temple of the Sun, known as the Coricancha (“golden enclosure”). The entire Inca empire was partitioned into four divisions known as suyus, a division that was so fundamental in Inca thought that the Inca name for their own empire was Tahuantinsuyu (“four parts”). The boundary lines separating the four suyus radiated out from Cusco, indeed from the Coricancha itself. This much is known from the accounts of several different chroniclers; but one of the most thorough and meticulous, Bernabй Cobo, tells us of the existence of no fewer than forty-one (or forty-two) such radial lines, and he records that they were known as ceques (or zeq’e).
The spiritual order of the Inca empire was based around shrines called huacas (or wak’a), sacred places for the worship of gods, prayers, and sacrifices. Huacas were often located at places that were in some way special or exceptional, such as caves, springs, mountain peaks, bends in rivers, or unusual rocks or trees. Cobo recorded well over three hundred huacas in the vicinity of Cusco, documenting each of them individually. Three hundred thirty-two of them were located on one of the ceques, with a number more that were not part of the system; none of the ceques contained fewer than three shrines, and a couple had as many as fifteen. The ceques, however, were more than just lines along which the sacred places lay. They were also linked in various ways to social relations and the division of labor. According to Cobo again, each ceque was given over to one of the three main social classes (those directly related, less directly related, or unrelated to the Inca ruler), and it was the responsibility of representatives of that social group to take care of its huacas and to carry out the appropriate ceremonial activities there. Protocols for assigning representatives of different family groups (ayllus) to communal work activities, such as the maintenance of irrigation canals, were also governed by the ceque system. In these and various other ways, the ceque system made many of the principles of Incaic social and political organization tangible in the landscape.