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Megalithic lunar observatories: an astronomer's view

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

D. C. Heggie
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Extract

Although several studies along broadly similar lines have been attempted by other authors in the past, it will benefit any archaeologist approaching the work of Professor A. Thom for the first time to do so with a fresh mind. What is new about Thom’s approach to this subject, which many astronomers find equally absorbing, is the care that has evidently been bestowed in the measurement of the sites themselves, the attention to detail that characterizes the reduction of this data, and finally the great volume of source material which, in his books and other writings, he has put at the disposal of others. Previous work seems by comparison to have been of lower accuracy and restricted to at most a few sites, of which Stonehenge figures most frequently.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 46 , Issue 181 , March 1972 , pp. 43 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1972

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Footnotes

Page 43 of note

Professor Alexander Thom's book ‘Megalithic lunar observatories’ (Oxford, 1971) was reviewed in this journal by David Kendall, Professor of Statistics in the University of Cambridge (1971, 310–13), who described it as ‘a remarkable book by a remarkable man’, and ‘compulsory reading for archaeologists’. In discussion with the Editor, Professor Kendall suggested that the book should also be appraised by an astronomer, and we are delighted that Mr Douglas Heggie of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in the University of Cambridge was able to do this for us. He says of this most interesting article that it ‘describes one astronomer's view of just how much Professor Thom has established concerning astronomy in megalithic times’. With the verdicts of Kendall and Heggie before them, no reasonable archaeologist can do other than give Thom's work the most serious consideration.

References

Page 43 of note * Megalithic sites in Britain.