Lessons in "archaeoastronomy" and "ethnoastronomy": a rich,
suggestive but sometimes incoherent collection of sky-lore. There
is no gainsaying Williamson's central thesis that "whether as
architects, weavers, hunters, potters, or storytellers, traditional
Native American men and women weave their perceptions of the
celestial patterns into their lives in order to participate
directly in the ways of the universe." The problem is that almost
all of those traditional Indians are now dead, so that students
attempting to explain the precise astronomical function of, say,
the Bighorn Medicine Wheel (an elaborate arrangement of cairns in
the mountains of Wyoming) or the "Castle" in Hovenweep National
Monument, have to rely on a combination of guesswork and
speculative reconstruction that will leave most lay readers cold.
On the other hand, we have plenty of solid evidence that American
Indians were keen empirical astronomers. Agricultural peoples, like
the ancient Anasazi in the Southwest, carefully calculated the
summer and winter solstices and planted their crops accordingly.
Hunting-and-gathering tribes, like the Cahuilla in California, used
a celestial calendar as well as terrestrial signs to ascertain the
time when edible plants would ripen, animals would give birth, etc.
All Indians were (and some still are) closely integrated through
myth and ritual into the seasonal cycles of sun, moon, planets, and
stars. To this day Hopi kivas, Sioux tipis, and Navaho hogans serve
to orient their occupants to the entire cosmos. Williamson (a
contributing editor of Archaeoastronomy) might have organized his
material more clearly and might have provided a glossary (for
technical terms like incursion and ecliptic), but he writes with
enthusiasm and expertise about a promising interdisciplinary field.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Imagine the North American Indians as astronomers carefully
watching the heavens, charting the sun through the seasons, or
counting the sunrises between successive lumar phases. Then imagine
them establishing observational sites and codified systems to pass
their knowledge down through the centuries and continually refine
it. A few years ago such images would have been abruptly dismissed.
Today we are wiser.
"Living the Sky" describes the exciting archaeoastronomical
discoveries in the United States in recent decades. Using history,
science, and direct observation, Ray A. Williamson transports the
reader into the sky world of the Indians. We visit the Bighorn
Medicine Wheel, sit with a Zuni sun priest on the winter solstice,
join explorers at the rites of the Hopis and the Navajos, and trek
to Chaco Canyon to make
direct on-site observations of celestial events.
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