Parallel sessions

Archaeoastronomy and cultural astronomy have especially through the idea of skyscapes become more integrated with archaeology. Skyscape emphasizes the placing of the sky into its cultural context, the understanding of which involves a holistic perception of sky, landscape and people. However, this theoretical advancement has not yet been complemented by technical developments or reassessments of the pioneering work done by, for example, Bradley Schaefer and Clive Ruggles in the 1980s and the 1990s.
The experience of observing celestial phenomena is intimately tied to elements familiar to astronomers, such as refraction, colour, limiting magnitude, and heliacal rising, some of which are poorly understood, only associated to high precision astronomy, or outright ignored, within archaeoastronomy. Furthermore, more recent and updated models of celestial mechanics, such as Laskar’s obliquity model, have been suggested within astronomy but have yet to crossover into archaeoastronomy. The same can be said with limiting magnitude algorithms still based upon data gathered in the 1940s. At this stage, astronomy has a very important role to play within skyscape archaeology, in that only astronomers can develop, refine and improve on such models that are vital to the reconstruction of the ancient skies, and the experience of their observation.
This session aims at revisiting essential observational components within cultural astronomy. This will allow speakers to discuss updated astronomical models and summarise publications overlooked by cultural astronomers. It will also offer the opportunity to present new approaches in field work and lab-work going beyond improved data collection. Presenters are encouraged to illustrate and contextualise their results including experienceable outputs supporting their inclusion in phenomenological approaches. As a result, the session will support skyscape archaeology in its aim to broaden the methodological and theoretical discussions taking place in cultural astronomy.