Current Thoughts: Archaeoastronomy

Disclaimer: I wrote this writing for when I was so bored. It is 10.35 in the morning on Ramadan vibes (some of my friends are still sleeping) and all I want is to communicate with people about my current thoughts. I don't think twitter and instagram are perfect so I try to write in this half-dead blog.

Currently I'm reading a book by Thomas Hockey entitled "How we see the sky: a naked eye tour of day and night". This book is pretty interesting for me. I just found it when I coincidentally sing a snippet of the lyric of For Forever by Dear Evan Hansen "all we see is sky... for forever" and change the lyric into "how we see the sky" and typed it on google search engine till I found the book on the search result. What a beautiful coincidence till I got the book and feel so excited to read it.

How can I be so excited?

It is simply because I love astronomy since I was in junior high school. The interest came when I was wonder about my future life "what would I wanna be when I grow up?" and the answer that came up to my mind was to be a scientist that could answer the human curiosity about the universe or what we so called as 'astronomer'. But then, I ended up with being an archaeology student as I'm interest in study more about culture and understanding human behaviour. (by the way it is my final semester and I'm excited to graduate immediately so I can explore some new awesome things ahead).

I love how Thomas Hockey wrote in his book. He often used some cultural approach to explain the interaction between human and the sky. He also wrote slightly about Archaeoastronomy -- a field of study that always excite me. In the "The Dawn of Archaeoastronomy" section in the Chapter 1 of his book, Hockey wrote that "...Archaeologists were appalled by his book (refers to Sir Norman Lockyer book entitled The Dawn of Astronomy (1894) that revealed about the orientation of some of Greek and Egyptian temples and monuments that are aligned to the sun and stars). It was clear by his writing that Lockyer did not know much about his subjects, and that when he did not know something, he replaced fact with broad speculation." (pg. 11).  But in another hand, Hockey wrote on the next sentence, "Lockyer (and other astronomers) complained that the archaeologists did not know basic astronomy, a claim that was probably equally true." (pg. 11). Those sentences then remind me of one of my experience as a student with archaeology background of knowledge that read some astronomers writings about cultural heritages.

I have once read about an astronomical research done by an astronomy student that revealed that there are some temples in Java that align to some of the astronomical objects such as sun and the stars (especially the stars on the Orion constellation). But the research only took a focus on the astronomical measurement without considering any of cultural context. Even though the cultural context plays a main role in archaeology studies that study specifically about the cultural heritage such as temples. What if the orientations of the temples that align to the astronomical objects are just coincidence? What if they (the cultural actors) had never used the astronomical object to the monument they built? The interpretation of cultural heritage by the astronomers could be arid and too stiff without the cultural context. That is why what Hockey wrote in his book is interesting me as an archaeology student that also have an interest in astronomy. Then I remember Anthony Aveni (an astronomer that dedicated his life to explore more about archeoastronomy) once ever said that astronomical research in cultural heritage could be better if done by archaeologists equipped by astronomical knowledge.

and those are all my current thoughts. Sorry for the bad grammars and vocabularies. Reach me to discuss more. Bye.