Sighting the Sun – and Moon? – at Stonehenge with Clive Ruggles & Amanda Chadburn

September 19 | 3:30 PM | Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum Auditorium, 27501 CO-184, Dolores, CO 81323

Clive Ruggles & Amanda Chadburn (45 min.)
Sighting the Sun – and Moon? – at Stonehenge

This talk draws from my recent book with Amanda Chadburn, "Stonehenge - Sighting the Sun". We start by describing what we can sensibly say about the relationship of Stonehenge to the sun, how this relates to more conventional archaeological evidence that has been uncovered in recent years, and the interesting archaeological questions this raises. We then go on to talk about the moon. The last two years have been a "major standstill period" when the moonrise and moonset appear periodically exceptionally far to the north and south along the horizon. Such periods only occur every 18-19 years. My colleagues and I have been at Stonehenge to observe and monitor a number of these critical moonrises over the past two years, investigating whether there is plausible evidence the builders of Stonehenge also observed and marked the motions of the moon and, if so, what might have been the purpose of this.

Made possible by the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest