Talk:Archaeoastronomy#Reliable Sources

Hi {{ping|Originalwana}} 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 [http://www.eso.org/public/usa/videos/MAA-show/?lang 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)

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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)

Is there any reason why this comprehensive Wikipedia article about archaeoastronomy does not mention the following important topics at all ?

• 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: [https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/19785/1/Issue%202%202001%20-%20The%20Tal-Qadi%20Stone%20A%20Moon%20Calendar%20or%20Star%20Map.pdf The Tal-Qadi Stone: A Moon Calendar or Star Map].
• The southern temple of Mnajdra in Malta: Frank Ventura, Michael Hoskin: [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_133 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.

--Bautsch (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

: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)

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 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)

I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are listed below:

• There is a lot of uncited text throughout the article.
• There are a lot of one-sentence paragraphs, which should be merged together.
• External links are used in the article prose, which is not recommended in WP:EL

Is anyone interested in improving this article, or should this go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 03:30, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Archaeoastronomy/1}}

Archaeoastronomy is, as the article notes, an interdisciplinary topic, and perhaps one that encourages speculative interpretations, but I don't think these are reasons to include dubiously sourced claims. So I have some concerns about the section on Lascaux and the sources that are relied on. Michael Rappenglück obtained his astronomy doctorate at the University of Munich, but he is not "of the University", i.e. he does not have an ongoing association with it. He is a resident astronomer at what, in the United States, might be called a community college. He published his theories about Lascaux in a journal called Migration & Diffusion, for which I find no evidence that there is a peer review process.

Chantal Jègues-Wolkiewiez likewise is an "independent researcher" who gets reported as being "of the University of Nice", and obtained her doctorate there, but has no apparent institutional affiliation. By her own blurb she is a "anthropologist, ethnoastronomer, and psychologist" but it's not clear on what she bases those. The article cites, as sources, links to her own web site and a popular magazine article that endorses her theory. When other authors cite it, they do so to her book On the starry paths of Lascaux.

In contrast, Julien d'Huy has anthropology credentials and has gotten his work through peer review. This is not to endorse his thesis, but only to say that it is in a much better position to be presented here as being well-informed. 2601:642:4F84:1590:D52:FF51:2714:6C4E (talk) 02:18, 4 May 2025 (UTC)