Talk:Archaeoastronomy

New Maya video trailer
Hi  I'm a bit puzzled by the Maya video trailer you added to the article. It's an attractive piece of art, but its interpretation is speculative and the video doesn't say much about the astronomy of the Maya and says nothing about the evidence for their astronomy. Furthermore, the caption is totally misleading; it may describe what's in the planetarium show for which it is a trailer, but it certainly doesn't describe the video, which says nothing about the six Maya temples mentioned in the caption. I'm tempted to just delete it but, if it had an accurate caption, it is such a nice video that it might belong somewhere in the article. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:15, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The trailer is an invitation to obtain the fulldome planetarium show, Mayan Archeoastronomy from the ESO, rather than a description of Maya archaeoastronomy. Since it does not add significant useful or relevant information to the article, it comes close to WP:Wikispam. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:57, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified (January 2018)
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 * I replaced the dead link with a new active one and removed the bot-generated material.--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:42, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Missing topics
Is there any reason why this comprehensive Wikipedia article about archaeoastronomy does not mention the following important topics at all ? --Bautsch (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * One of the oldest solar observatories in the world, the Goseck circle in Saxony-Anhalt.
 * One of the oldest known pictorial representations of the night sky, the Tal-Qadi Stone from Malta: Chris Micallef: The Tal-Qadi Stone: A Moon Calendar or Star Map.
 * The southern temple of Mnajdra in Malta: Frank Ventura, Michael Hoskin: Temples of Malta, in: Clive Ruggles (editor), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, 7. July 2014, pages 1421-1430, Springer, New York, ISBN 978-1-4614-6140-1.


 * A quick answer to your question lies in your use of the word "comprehensive" to describe this article. Even the most comprehensive work on archaeoastronomy, the three volume (2297 pp.) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, which you cite above, does not include all the sites that you mention above. They could not all be included in a Wikipedia article while retaining balance and preventing the article from getting too long.
 * The second reason is that this article discusses the discipline of archaeoastronomy, its varied approaches and methods, and in one section discusses a few extensively studied Major sites of archaeoastronomical interest. Many other sites, such as the Goseck circle, have their own articles in Wikipedia, while some are just listed in Wikipedia's List of archaeoastronomical sites sorted by country or List of artifacts significant to archaeoastronomy.
 * To return to my main point, there's no way that a Wikipedia article can be comprehensive without getting too long to read. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 19:11, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Article structure
I find this article to have interesting content, but the writing seems jumbled. Maybe someone could reorganize it or something? Dharmadha2 (talk) 15:35, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

India listed under "Fringe Astrology"
India is listed under "Fringe Astrology" as thus

"India[edit] Further information: Archaeoastronomy and Vedic chronology Since the 19th century, numerous scholars have sought to use archaeoastronomical calculations to demonstrate the antiquity of Ancient Indian Vedic culture, computing the dates of astronomical observations ambiguously described in ancient poetry to as early as 4000 BC. David Pingree, a historian of Indian astronomy, condemned "the scholars who perpetrate wild theories of prehistoric science and call themselves archaeoastronomers"."

While I'm sure that might of gotten a chuckle from the late Professor considering he wrote two volumes cataloging the works of Indian Astrologers and added a few of his own on the subject, I'd think he'd try to read further to find out what more he may of had been quoted on about the subject and would of frowned when he saw nothing more but that one comment being attributed to him given the vast amount of time he spent on the subject writing and reviewing various works on the subject. Clearly he found more than enough of it worthy of note and was not so dismissive as this quote would leave one to believe. Para59r (talk) 22:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)