Session: #2

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
5. (Extreme) Environments – Islands, Coasts, Margins, Centres
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Archaeology, Landscape and the Skyscape. How Material Archeology Is Woven with Different Ontological and Cultural Interpretations [SEAC-EAA]
Content:
This session is the continuation of the sessions of the last three years and belongs to the SEAC-EAA community. Our goals coincide with those of the community.
We consider that one of the aspects of the relationship between archeology and cultural astronomy has been the interconnection between celestial bodies and humans. The orientation of the archaeological structures towards certain stars or features of the landscape have been one of the greatest evidences of their ontological and cultural importance. By studying star alignments with ancient constructions, we can learn about the relationships of past human societies with celestial bodies, landscape, and phenomena. From our point of view, places with cosmic connections could have generated "new assemblages" (a term borrowed from Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari) of objects, human and natural, revealing sets of practices and materialities situated in time. We propose to study them and give them a cultural and ontological meaning.
Therefore, some of the issues that the papers in this session should address are: is it possible to understand how people lived in their environment by observing and studying the landscape, the sky or any other aspect of an archaeological site? How technology and new techniques allow us to understand known data? What is the ontological relationship between people and their environment? How can the construction of old buildings be understood from a skyscape or landscape point of view? The purpose of the session is to carry out an archaeological study with multidisciplinary contributions. To achieve our goals, we supplement the archaeological data with those of other sciences.
Keywords:
Skyscape Ontology, Ethnography, Archaeology, Landscape, Astronomy, Ontology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
SEAC-EAA

Organisers

Main organiser:
Jose Balbi (Argentina) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Hans Martz de la Vega (Mexico) 3
Stanislaw Iwaniszewski (Poland) 4
Javier Mejuto (Spain) 5
Affiliations:
1. Colchester Archaeological Group
2. Dirección de Cultura y Educación de Buenos Aires
3. Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico)
4. State Museum of Archaeology, Warsow, (Poland)
5. Archeoastronomy & Cultural astronomy dep, Space sciences. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.