Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian

Author:   Ray A. Williamson
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780806120348


Pages:   400
Publication Date:   30 May 1987
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian


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Overview

Imagine the North American Indians as astronomers carefully watching the heavens, charting the sun through the seasons, or counting the sunrises between successive lumar phases. Then imagine them establishing observational sites and codified systems to pass their knowledge down through the centuries and continually refine it. A few years ago such images would have been abruptly dismissed. Today we are wiser. Living the Sky describes the exciting archaeoastronomical discoveries in the United States in recent decades. Using history, science, and direct observation, Ray A. Williamson transports the reader into the sky world of the Indians. We visit the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, sit with a Zuni sun priest on the winter solstice, join explorers at the rites of the Hopis and the Navajos, and trek to Chaco Canyon to make direct on-site observations of celestial events.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ray A. Williamson
Publisher:   University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint:   University of Oklahoma Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.631kg
ISBN:  

9780806120348


ISBN 10:   0806120347
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   30 May 1987
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

Lessons in archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy : a rich, suggestive but sometimes incoherent collection of sky-lore. There is no gainsaying Williamson's central thesis that whether as architects, weavers, hunters, potters, or storytellers, traditional Native American men and women weave their perceptions of the celestial patterns into their lives in order to participate directly in the ways of the universe. The problem is that almost all of those traditional Indians are now dead, so that students attempting to explain the precise astronomical function of, say, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel (an elaborate arrangement of cairns in the mountains of Wyoming) or the Castle in Hovenweep National Monument, have to rely on a combination of guesswork and speculative reconstruction that will leave most lay readers cold. On the other hand, we have plenty of solid evidence that American Indians were keen empirical astronomers. Agricultural peoples, like the ancient Anasazi in the Southwest, carefully calculated the summer and winter solstices and planted their crops accordingly. Hunting-and-gathering tribes, like the Cahuilla in California, used a celestial calendar as well as terrestrial signs to ascertain the time when edible plants would ripen, animals would give birth, etc. All Indians were (and some still are) closely integrated through myth and ritual into the seasonal cycles of sun, moon, planets, and stars. To this day Hopi kivas, Sioux tipis, and Navaho hogans serve to orient their occupants to the entire cosmos. Williamson (a contributing editor of Archaeoastronomy) might have organized his material more clearly and might have provided a glossary (for technical terms like incursion and ecliptic), but he writes with enthusiasm and expertise about a promising interdisciplinary field. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

Ray A. Williamson holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Maryland. He is a Project Director in the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress.

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