Clive Ruggles - Selected papers and articles (2020-2024)

Cultural astronomy

Archaeoastronomy is the study of beliefs and practices relating to the sky in the past, especially in prehistory, and the uses to which people’s knowledge of the skies was put.

Journals, present and past

Cultural astronomy is the combination of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, which relates to contemporary cultures.

Professional bodies

The 3-volume Springer Handbook contains 217 chapters on themes, issues, methods and practice, and case studies by authors from around the world.

You might also be interested in some of the materials to be found on cultural-astronomy.com.

Selected papers and articles (2020-2024)

(With Amanda Chadburn) Missing data. Cosmovisiones/Cosmovisões, in press.

(With Patrick V. Kirch and Jillian Swift) The Pre-Contact Temple System of Hālawa Valley, Moloka‘i, Hawaiian Islands. Archaeology in Oceania, 59 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.5309.

The IAU–UNESCO “Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative” and the Pic-du-Midi Observatory. In Thierry Montmerle and Danielle Fauque (eds.), Astronomers as Diplomats: When the IAU Builds Bridges Between Nations, Springer, New York (2022), pp.485–499.

(With Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Timothy Kinnaird, Aayush Srivastava, Chris Casswell, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Jim Rylatt and Kevan Edinborough) How Waun Mawn stone circle was designed and built, and when the Bluestones arrived at Stonehenge: a response to Darvill . Antiquity, 96 (2022), 1530–1537.

(With Amanda Chadburn, Matt Leivers and Andrew Smith) A possible new solstitial sightline in the Stonehenge landscape. Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 7 (2021), 144–156.

(With Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Timothy Kinnaird, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins, Rob Ixer, Jim Rylatt and Kevan Edinborough) The original Stonehenge? A dismantled stone circle in the Preseli Hills of West Wales. Antiquity, 95 (2021), 85–103.

(With Matt Leivers and Amanda Chadburn) A new midsummer alignment near Stonehenge. British Archaeology, no. 176 (2021), 8–9.

Cultural astronomy and cultural heritage: a global perspective. In Peigín Doyle, Pathways to the Cosmos: The Alignment of Megalithic Tombs in Ireland and Atlantic Europe, Wordwell, Dublin (2020), pp. 122–137. (Scripted by Peigín Doyle from a presentation at a conference at Dublin Castle in 2018.)

(With Patrick V. Kirch and Alan Carpenter) Kukuipahu: a unique Hawaiian monumental structure utilizing cut-and-dressed stone masonry. Rapa Nui Journal, 32(1/2) (2020), 37–57.

The orientation of the Stonehenge avenue and its implications. In Mike Parker Pearson et al. (eds), Stonehenge for the Ancestors. Part 1: Landscape and Monuments, Sidestone Press, London (2020), pp. 463–465.

Astronomical heritage

The UNESCO–IAU Portal to the Heritage of Astronomy contains a wide range of examples of different types of astronomical heritage together with information relevant to its protection, conservation, evaluation, management and promotion.