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What Equinox?

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Advancing Cultural Astronomy

Part of the book series: Historical & Cultural Astronomy ((HCA))

Abstract

Equinox, what a controversial concept! Since the dawn of archaeoastronomy this has arguably been the most problematic concept—perhaps together with the lunar standstills or lunistices (González García and Belmonte, Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 5(2):178–190, 2019)—to be taken into account since it was first used in ‘megalithic’ astronomy to explain the orientation of certain monuments such as the impressive tumulus of Knowth in Ireland or, more recently, the dolmen of Viera in Spain. The term ‘megalithic’ equinox has been polluting the scientific literature since the 1970s. In the mid-1990s, the situation was so harsh that Clive Ruggles thought it could be adequate to ask ‘Whose equinox?’ (Ruggles, Archaeoastronomy 28:S45–S51, 1997). A decade later, González-García and Belmonte (Archaeoastronomy, Journal for Astronomy in Culture 20:95–105, 2006) asked themselves ‘Which equinox?’ when the date and concept of the equinox in ancient Rome at the moment of the Julian reform had to be taken into account. The Romans apparently favoured the day midway between the solstices instead of the astronomical equinox itself. Consequently, it is clear that one needs to be very cautious when studying buildings with an orientation close to due-East and claiming that they are ‘equinoctial’. This paper will explore different patterns—or very suggestive individual cases—of ‘equinoctial’ orientations across time and space and will pose the question: ‘what equinox’ were they observing? Evidence suggests that ‘equinoctial’ alignments are as variegated as definitions of ‘equinox’ we might imagine.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors for counting on me for this suggestive project. To be on the list of scientists honouring Clive is a pride for me. The author acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI), Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grant with reference AYA2015-66787-P “Orientatio ad Sidera IV” and under the internal IAC project P310793 “Arqueoastronomía”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    Juan Antonio Belmonte

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  1. Juan Antonio Belmonte
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Correspondence to Juan Antonio Belmonte .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Efrosyni Boutsikas

  2. Department of History, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Stephen C. McCluskey

  3. Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    John Steele

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Belmonte, J.A. (2021). What Equinox?. In: Boutsikas, E., McCluskey, S.C., Steele, J. (eds) Advancing Cultural Astronomy. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_2

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