Eleven papers extend discussion of the role and importance of the landscape and the wider environment to past societies, and to the understanding and interpretation of their material remains, into consideration of the significance of the celestial environment: the skyscape. The role of the sky for past societies has been relegated to the fringes of archaeological discourse. Nevertheless archaeoastronomy has developed a new rigour in the last few decades and the evidence suggests that it can provide insights into the beliefs, practices and cosmologies of past societies.Skyscapes explores the current role of archaeoastronomical knowledge in archaeological discourse and how to integrate the two. It shows how it is not only possible but even desirable to look at the skyscape to shed further light on human societies. This is achieved by first exploring the historical relationship between archaeoastronomy and academia in general, and with archaeology in particular. The volume continues by presenting case-studies that either demonstrate how archaeoastronomical methodologies can add to our current understanding of past societies, their structures and beliefs, or how integrated approaches can raise new questions and even revolutionise current views of the past.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface: Meaning and Intent in Ancient Skyscapes – An Andean Perspective
• Chapter 1: The Role and Importance of the Sky in Archaeology: An Introduction
• Chapter 2: Skyscapes: Locating Archaeoastronomy within Academia
• Chapter 3: An Examination of the Divide Between Archaeoastronomy and Archaeology
• Chapter 4: Skyscapes: Present and Past – From Sustainability to Interpreting Ancient Remains
• Chapter 5: 30b – the West Kennet Avenue Stone that Never Was: Interpretation by Multidisciplinary Triangulation and Emergence through Four Field Anthropology
• Chapter 6: Can Archaeoastronomy Inform Archaeology on the Building Chronology of the Mnajdra Neolithic Temple in Malta?
• Chapter 7: Star Phases: the Naked-eye Astronomy of the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts
• Chapter 8: An Architectural Perspective on Structured Sacred Space – Recent Evidence from Iron Age Ireland
• Chapter 9: The Circumpolar Skyscape of a Pembrokeshire Dolmen
• Chapter 10: The View from Within: a ‘Time-Space-Action’ Approach to Megalithism in Central Portugal
• Chapter 11: Afterword: Dances Beneath a Diamond Sky