Archeoastronomy

Catalog description

This course introduces archaeoastronomy as the evidence-based, interdisciplinary study of how human societies—ancient and modern—understood the sky and embedded that knowledge in architecture, ritual, calendars, navigation, and political power. Students learn naked-eye astronomical foundations, alignment/landscape methods, and global case studies. We emphasize rigorous inference, uncertainty/statistical controls, and cultural context. Pseudoscientific framings (e.g., “ancient aliens,” lost super-civilizations) are explicitly excluded.