Programme
When:
Tuesday 13 Oct, 2020, Time 4 - 6 pm BST
Tuesday 10 Nov, 2020, Time 4 - 6 pm GMT
Tuesday 8 Dec 2020, Time 4 - 6 pm GMT
Tuesday 12 Jan, 2021, Time 4 - 6 pm GMT
Friday 12 Feb, 2021, Time 4 - 6 pm GMT
Friday 12 Jan, 2021, Time 4 - 6 pm GMT
Where: Online via Zoom
Click the link below for manual:
How to join the Zoom Seminar RoomAn Online Event!
Programme Schedule
Tuesday, October 13th 2020. 4.00 – 6.00 pm BST
Carolyn Kennett: Insights into the Skyscape at The Hurlers Stone Circle Complex, Cornwall: Mapping the Sun and Reading the Hurlers.
Carolyn Kennett is an astronomer, writer and researcher and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Her main focus of research considers how ancient communities connected to the night sky, but she is also interested in the development of planetary science through the ages. Carolyn lives in the far south-west of the UK and her ancient site research is focused on Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly She was until recently the editor for the Society of the History of Astronomy, editing their Bulletin magazine for four years. Her most current book Neptune: From Grand Discovery to a World Revealed, in which she is an editor and author, is due for publication later this year with Springer. Earlier this year she published a booklet called Watching the Sun which is a collaborative volume drawing on past articles from a local Cornish publication called Meyn Mamvro to explore how people connected to the Sun during ancient times. She writes about the history of astronomy for national publications including Astronomy Now. She is a regular speaker on this topic within the astronomical community and has also been involved with local radio and TV.
Alejandro López: Through the eyes of the living. The study of present societies and the future of cultural astronomy
Dr Alejandro Martín López currently works at the Sección de Etnología, Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a researcher for CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council). He is an astronomer with a PhD in social anthropology. Alejandro’s research is focused on the ethnoastronomy of South American aboriginal groups, especially Moqoit people of the Chaco region and their relation with the meteoric dispersion of Campo del Cielo. Alejandro also studies the anthropology of religion, ethnomathematics, astronomical heritage, cultural astronomy and the education and social history of astronomy. He is especially interested in the links between cosmovisions, cosmologies, social change, political relations, land and cultural claims together with knowledge disputes. Alejandro teaches cultural astronomy, symbolic anthropology and history of mathematics at university level. Dr López is president of the Sociedad Interamericana de Astronomía en la Cultura (SIAC), the international professional association of Latin American cultural astronomy; he is also a member of ISAAC and SEAC and is chair of the IAU Working Group C.C4.WG4 Astronomical Heritage in danger. He is one of the two coordinators of the editorial committee of Cosmovisiones/ Cosmovisões, the journal of SIAC.
Tuesday, November 10th 2020. 4.00 – 6.00 pm GMT
Juan Belmonte: From Giza to Petra: land- and skyscapes of the ancient Middle East
Juan Antonio Belmonte is an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Tenerife, Spain) where he lectures on the history of astronomy and archaeoastronomy and conducts research on exoplanets, stellar physics and cultural astronomy. He has published or edited a dozen books and authored nearly 200 publications on those subjects. He has been the Director of the Science and Cosmos Museum of Tenerife from 1995 to 2000, President of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) from 2005 to 2011 and President of the Spanish Time Allocation Committee (CAT) of the Canarian observatories, including the new generation 10 m GTC, from 2003 to 2012. In 2012, he received the “Carlos Jaschek” award of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture for his contributions to the discipline. He is now advisory editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy, co-editor of Archaeoastronomy: the Journal for Astronomy in Culture and on the editorial board of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology. For the last few years he has been performing extensive research on the astronomical traditions of ancient civilisations, concentrating on the ancient Mediterranean cultures, notably in Egypt. Born in Murcia (Spain) in 1962, he studied physics and got his master-thesis in 1986 at Barcelona University and obtained his PhD on Astrophysics at La Laguna University in 1989.
Katya Stroud: A Neolithic World View Lost in Translation: Understanding the Megalithic Temples of Malta
Katya Stroud studied archaeology at the University of Malta graduating with a Masters degree in 2004. Her studies focused on the history of conservation and management of archaeological sites, particularly the Maltese Megalithic Temples. Between 2000 and 2004 she worked as a freelance archaeologist as part of Archaeology Services Co-operative Ltd., participating in rescue excavations, environmental impact assessments and the design of various projects for archaeological sites in collaboration with both private and public entities. She has been employed with Heritage Malta since 2004 and is currently Senior Curator of the Prehistoric Sites Department. She is particularly interested in the study of the history of conservation and management of archaeological sites as well as popular interpretations and changing perceptions of archaeological sites.
Tuesday, December 8th 2020. 4.00 – 6.00 pm GMT
Kenny Brophy: Megalithic overkill and knights on a chessboard: rescuing the multiple stone rows of northern Scotland from Alexander Thom
Dr Kenneth Brophy is Head of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow and Co-organiser of the Neolithic Studies Group. He has 25 years experience in researching Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland, including directing excavations at sites as diverse as Neolithic monuments and buildings, multiple stone rows in Caithness and cup-and-ring marked sites near Glasgow. He has published widely on topics such as Scotland’s prehistory, archaeological theory, cropmarks and aerial archaeology as well as on the politics of studying prehistory. More recently he has been researching the contemporary archaeology of prehistory and blogs as the urban prehistorian.
Marc Frincu: Revisiting the Armenian highlands. New discoveries and alternative theories
Dr Marc Frincu is an associate professor (conferentiar - in Romanian) with the Department of Computer Science at West University of Timisoara Romania, Faculty of Mathematics (UVT), working on cutting edge topics related to clouds, smart grids, and Big Data. Since October 2017 he has been the vice dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. He received his PhD from UVT in 2011 working on Adaptive Scheduling for Distributed Systems. Prior to rejoining UVT in 2015, he was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Southern California working with Prof. Viktor Prasanna on smart grids and clouds and now at UVT he leads the CER research group focusing on applying cloud computing to areas such as smart grids and Big Data. Marc has co-authored over 70 related articles in scientific journals such as Springer Computing. His vision is to strengthen UVT's research in ICT related areas through research funding and collaborations with the industry. Marc is also interested in other research fields such as archaeoastronomy and is actively researching Romania's ancient astronomical history. He has been president of the Romanian Society for Cultural Astronomy (SRPAC) since 2017 and is also an associated member of the European Society for Cultural Astronomy (SEAC).
Tuesday, January 12th 2021. 4.00 – 6.00 pm GMT
Georg Zotti: Stellarium for Cultural Astronomy Research
Dr Georg Zotti is a computer scientist with a lifelong interest in astronomy, especially interested in the application of computer graphics and geodata processing for cultural astronomy research and outreach, including virtual reconstructions of historical astronomical instruments. He has developed several kinds of printable astrolabes and built 35 wooden astrolabes and several other related instruments. Since 2011 he has been one of the developers of the free and open-source Stellarium desktop planetarium, where he is working on raising its astronomical accuracy for applications in historical research. This includes adding functionality for Stellarium’s application in cultural astronomy, most notably a time-aware 3D landscape rendering module which allows orientation studies and demonstrations in virtual archaeoastronomy. He has published many research papers as well as contributing a chapter to Visualising Skyscapes (eds Henty and Brown, Routledge, 2019) which detailed the possibilities of GIS-based modelling and astronomical simulation. He is also vice-president of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC), second president of the German Society for Archaeoastronomy and founder and editor of the Austrian Astronomical Almanach (since 2020). Also In 2020 he joined the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and became a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology.
Stanislaw Iwaniszewski: Relational fields in archaeoastronomy: the Mt. Tlaloc temple in Central Mexico
Stanislaw Iwaniszewski is Professor of Archaeology at the Postgraduate Studies Division of the National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico (ENAH-INAH). He is an expert on Mesoamerican culture and Central European prehistoric monuments and has published many contributions to these fields. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and a prominent member of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC), serving as Vice-president for many years as well as receiving the “Carlos Jaschek” award for his contributions to cultural astronomy in 2018. Additionally he is concerned with the theory of cultural astronomy and published a number of papers relating to animism, cosmology and the sly as a social field.
Friday, February 12th 2021. 4.00 – 6.00 pm GMT
Ed Krupp: Uplifted and Transported: Encounters at Burro Flats, California
Dr E C Krupp, known affectionately as Ed, is an American astronomer, researcher, and author of seminal archaeoastronomy books including Archaeoastronomy and the Roots of Science, In Search of Ancient Astronomies and Echoes of Ancient Skies. He is an internationally recognised expert in the study of how ancient cultures viewed the sky and how those views affected their cultures. He has been the director of the Griffith Observatory at Los Angeles since 1974. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union and has served in several divisions and commissions of both organisations. He served on the inaugural editorial board of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology from 2015 to 2019, publishing an authoritative account of the Crab Supernova Rock Art in the American Southwest in JSA 1.2.
Steven Gullberg: Astronomy of the Inca Empire
Steven Gullberg is Director for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture in the University of Oklahoma’s College of Professional and Continuing Studies. He also heads the college’s Lead Faculty for its School of Integrative and Cultural Studies. At the University of Oklahoma, Steven spearheaded the development of a graduate-level archaeoastronomy distance-learning programme designed to educate researchers around the world. Additionally, he is chair of the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture. His work includes extensive field research of the astronomy of the Incas in the Peruvian Andes and significant analysis of the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries. He is regularly invited to give presentations at a variety of international conferences in his endeavour to globally advance the field of archaeoastronomy. A goal of his is to expand awareness and research of cultural astronomy in disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology and Indigenous studies. He also enjoys giving outreach talks to the public. Steven’s many publications include a recent book, Astronomy of the Inca Empire: Use and Significance of the Sun and the Night Sky (Springer, 2020), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.
Friday, March 12th 2021. 4.00 – 6.00 pm GMT
Duane Hamacher: "It doesn't have to be like that" - Safeguarding Humanity from Stellar Erasure
Duane Hamacher is Associate Professor of Cultural Astronomy in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne, an Associate Investigator in the ASTRO-3D Centre of Excellence and an Ambassador for the Australian Dark Sky Alliance. With degrees in physics, astronomy and Indigenous Studies, he focuses on Indigenous astronomical knowledge, astronomical heritage, Dark Sky studies, the history and philosophy of science, archaeoastronomy and geomythology. He is Secretary of the International Society of Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture; Chair of the IAU Working Group in Ethnoastronomy & Intangible Heritage; a member of the IAU Working Group on Star Names and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage. He holds honorary Adjunct positions at the University of Southern Queensland, the University of the Sunshine Coast and the National Autonomous University of Honduras. His consulting work focuses on incorporating cultural astronomy into theatre productions, art exhibitions, films, documentaries, commemorative coins, rock concerts, national curricula, museum exhibitions, tourism programmes and planetarium shows.
Frank Prendergast: Light and Shadows in Antiquity—inferring meaning expressed in past materiality and practices
Dr Frank Prendergast is an archaeologist, archaeoastronomer and geodetic surveyor who has written extensively about the prehistoric monuments in Ireland, with particular reference to the Irish passage tombs’ tradition. He is a Council member of the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (ISAAC) as well as being a member of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC). He was instrumental in organising the 1998 SEAC conference ‘Astronomy, Cosmology and Landscape’ and was co-editor of the Proceedings. His publications include ‘An architectural perspective on structured sacred space - recent evidence from Iron Age Ireland’ in F Silva and N Campion (eds) Skyscapes (Oxbow, 2015); contributions in the Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, C L N Ruggles (ed) (Springer, 2015) and a chapter on the dark sky character of archaeological landscapes in Visualising Skyscapes, L Henty and D Brown (eds), Routledge, 2019.
Each Zoom session will consist of two 45 minute lectures, each followed by questions from the audience and the schedule is as follows:
Each lecture will last for approximately two hours. All sessions will be recorded and you will have access to the recordings for a month afterwards (useful if you can't join live).
The cost is £10 per session or £50 for all six.
For booking, please click here.
Please join us for a great chance to find out about skyscape archaeology worldwide.
With our best wishes
Liz Henty
Journal of Skyscape Archaeology
Nick Campion
Sophia Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David
The Journal of Skyscape Archaeology is the only academic journal in the world to explore the relationship between archaeolgical sites and the sky, stars and planets, including archaeoastronomy. The journal’s advisory board includes senior academics and researchers from across the field.
The Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture is a research and teaching centre at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. It examines the relationships between cosmology and culture through history, anthropology philosophy and archaeology. and teaches the Master’s degrees in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology and Ecology and Spirituality.
Welcome to the public outreach page of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, with information about studying with the University, as well as links to related conferences, classes, publications and events. To go straight to the Sophia Centre's University page please go here.
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