Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1986 - 52

But the nature of these alignments is not in the scientific style of
exact measurements repeated over
many years that has been proposed by
Hawkins, Hoyle, Newham, and
others for Stonehenge, and by Thom
for the Megalithic monuments as
a group. Instead they suggest generalized alignments, rather like
mosques which are oriented toward
Mecca, and English parish churches
which are usually aligned on the
eastern horizon, sometimes in the
position of sunrise on the saint's
day to which the church is dedicated.
Now, is astronomy of this kind
prehistoric science or prehistoric
religion? This hinges on your conception of science. Science, by
the dictionary definition, is no more
than systematic understanding.
Certainly, prehistoric people must
have noticed the regular movements
of the sun on whose light and warmth
they depended, and of the moon,
the most dramatically changing
object in the sky. To this day, small
farmers in the French Alps regulate
their sowing and harvesting by
the moon's phases, which they believe
control the success of their crops.
Still, call it religion, or call it science,
knowledge of this kind is not
"computing" or "astronomy" in
anything resembling our modern
world.
So why do the engineers of the
University of Missouri and so many

Earlier generations had very different ideas about Stonehenge than
today's archaeoastronomers.
Often it was believed to be the sacrificial site of the ancient Druids .
52

ARCHAEOLOGY

of Stonehenge's millions of visitors
believe that what they are seeing is
the world's oldest computer? Part
of the reason must simply be that the
idea, right or wrong, is so exciting.
To think that ancient "barbarians"
shared the same view, the same quest
to understand the universe makes
them marvelously human. A NASA
documentary film of a few years
ago, intercutting Stonehenge with
U.S. space probes, linked them
together- the voice-over explaining
how each project expressed the
same human search in the finest
technology of its own age.
Another reason, especially
in the 1960s when the hi-tech bandwagon started to roll, was the
particular presentation of Stonehenge
astronomy. Parts of Stonehenge
Decoded are a veritable hymn to the
IBM computer, the "uncomplaining, untemperamental, tireless"
machine which "does not make mistakes"- the superhuman beast
which had at last "decoded" the ancient computer's secrets.
And there is a specific reason
why the enthusiasm for Stonehenge
astronomy, now so tarnished in
Britain, is little diminished in the
United States. This is the very
good evidence for ancient astronomy
in the Americas. The ancient Maya
and Aztec civilizations certainly
had an advanced astronomical understanding, and sophisticated calendars are central to Mesoamerican
ritual and time-reckoning. And
there are many other ethnohistorical
examples, such as the Hopi observations of the sunrise moving across
the mesa tops as the guide for the
agricultural cycle. In the New World,
the question archaeoastronomy
faces is: what was the exact nature
of the advanced astronomical observations known to have been made
in ancient times? In the Old World,
evidence of astronomy is claimed
much earlier- not just in the Megalithic period from 4000 to 2000 b.c.,
but among the upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers dating to
20,000 B.c.
From a sceptical viewpoint,
the joy of Stonehenge astronomy fits
better with the long historical
tradition in which this enigmatic

ruin has been seen and through the
colored spectacles of each era.
Mediaeval historians placed it in
the fantasy world of Arthurian
romances; Neo-classical architects
claimed it as a perfection of Roman
building; and druidomaniacs saw
it as the glorious proof of ancient
Albion- a golden vision of Britain as
a garden of Eden. Many of these
traditions are still alive even now.
People calling themselves Druids
perform at Stonehenge to this day,
and a full-scale rock festival held
each June has as its nominal inspiration the ancient mystic powers
of which Stonehenge is thought to
be the most dramatic evidence.
So the Stonehenge computer-cumobservatory takes its place in this
procession, as the scientific myth
devised in a scientific age. In a postscientific age- whatever that will
look like- no doubt it will seem
as odd a curiosity as we now consider
the nineteenth-century Stonehenge
expert who discovered some "glazed
coagulated matter" sheltered in
its crannies and interpreted it as
physical evidence of inundation by
Noah's flood. My guess is that
the next decade will see an increase
in Stonehenge as a religious monument, rather than a scientific
instrument.
And yet, as there is no certainty
for Stonehenge astronomy, so there
cannot be absolute certainty against
it. Stonehenge only fits partially
to the general pattern of Megalithic
monuments. Where the stones of
other sites are left in natural roughness, those of Stonehenge are
precisely shaped. Where the geometry
of other rings falls, more or less
badly, into simple shapes for the
most part, the largest elements
of Stonehenge are a superb fit to a
good ellipse. If the engineering and
the geometry are so fine- and perhaps unique to Stonehenge- is it
not right that we should seek and
find evidence at Stonehenge- and
perhaps at Stonehenge alone- of a
correspondingly unique standard
of astronomical understanding?

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1986

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1986