Connections: the relationships between Neolithic and Bronze Age Megalithic Astronomy in Britain

TL;DR

This paper explores the historical progression of astronomical alignments in British megalithic monuments, linking Neolithic and Bronze Age sites through landscape and celestial patterning analysis.

Contribution

It demonstrates that astronomical-landscape variables at Bronze Age sites originated from earlier Neolithic monuments, establishing a chronological connection between the two periods.

Findings

Bronze Age monuments align with astronomical bodies on the horizon.

Neolithic sites like Castlerigg and Swinside influenced later monument alignments.

Complex landscape and astronomical patternings are consistent across periods.

Abstract

It has already been empirically verified that for many Bronze Age monuments erected in Scotland between 1400-900 BC, there was a concerted effort on behalf of the builders to align their monuments to astronomical bodies on the horizon. It has also been found that there are two common sets of complex landscape and astronomical patternings, combining specific horizon qualities, like distance and elevation, with the rising and setting points of particular astronomical phenomena. However, it has only been very recently demonstrated by us that that the visible astronomical-landscape variables found at Bronze Age sites on the inner isles and mainland of western Scotland were first established nearly two millennia earlier, with the erection of the mooted first standing-stone 'great circles' in Britain: Callanish and Stenness of Scotland (see G. Higginbottom and R. Clay, The Origins of Standing Stone Astronomy in Britain submitted to Journal of Archaeological Science & available on ArXiv). In the current paper we demonstrate the connection between all of these monuments and the large Late Neolithic circles south of Scotland, namely those of Castlerigg and Swinside in Cumbria, England.