One of the reasons I’m putting up more stuff recently is that it’s a spin-off from polishing the thesis. Reasonable questions would be: What do is Social Astronomy? and Why is that Archaeoastronomy and not History of Astronomy? The answers to both questions are connected.
Social Astronomy is the study of astronomy as used for social purposes. This fits very neatly with Archaeoastronomy which these days tends also to be referred to as Cultural Astronomy. In contrast History of Astronomy, especially in the ancient world, has tended to be the story of how Astronomy in its modern sense grew from ancient practices. An example of very good History of Astronomy in an ancient context would be James Evans’s book The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. It’s a very good book covering the mathematical basis ancient astronomy and how people got progressively more accurate at predicting the movement of the planets. I think that’s going to be a defining work on ancient astronomy for a generation, but there’s still things it misses. The quest for accuracy is the underlying narrative of a lot of ancient astronomy books. It misses the factor that people, especially the ancient Greeks, might have also wanted and aimed for inaccurate astronomy. That is an odd claim, after all isn’t astronomy a science?
Below is an example from Thucydides. To give this some context, this happened in 419 BC during the Peloponnesian War. This was the big war between Athens and the Pelopennesian League, led by Sparta at the end of the 5th century BC. At this time Athens was trying to stir up trouble by supporting some cities on the Peloponnese in their attacks against others. One ally was Argos, who wanted to attack Epidauros. The Argives sent their army to the edge of their territory ready to invade. Unfortunately for them Epidauros was an ally of Sparta. Sparta had sent its army. The Spartans didn’t leave their territory because the omens were bad, but they were ready to defend Epidauros if the Argives attacked. At this time Sparta was invincible on land. Argos could be confident of beating Epidauros, but attacking Epidauros and Sparta would be suicide. In addition Argos was up against a time-limit. The festival of the Karneia was approaching. The army had to be home for the month of Karneios; fighting during this month would be sacreligious. The armies were all stuck at the limits of their territories in a stalement, and all the Spartans had to do to defend Epidauros was wait out the month. The month would start with New Moon.
The Argives were stuck. As they watched the Moon wane, so did their hopes of victory. Eventually it was the fourth day before the end of the month and the start of Karneios. Sparta had won. There was no way the Argives could march in to Epidaurian territory, fight and get back home for the start of the month. To make sure they weren’t away from Sparta for this hugely sacred month, the Spartan army packed up and went home. This next bit comes from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War:
Upon the retreat of the Spartans the Argives marched out on the last day but three of the month before Karneios, and keeping this as the day during the whole time that they were out, invaded and plundered Epidauros. The Epidaurians summoned their allies to their aid, some of whom pleaded the month as an excuse; others came as far as the frontier of Epidauros and there remained inactive.
Is one of the earliest examples of sarcasm being deployed as an offensive weapon? It’s plain that everyone would have been able to see the phase of the moon. Yet each city had its own calendar, and could fix it how they liked. There’s plenty of historical evidence that extra days were inserted or cut out of the year, presumably for the timing of rituals. The Greeks knew this was mucking about with the calendar. Steve McCluskey has referred back to van der Waerden’s work on Greek inscriptions referring to dates by the civic calendar and by the moon, which could differ by twenty days. Argos was merely taking it to an extreme. Perhaps Historians of Astronomy could argue that the intent to deliberately de-couple the moon phase from the calendar means that it’s not really Astronomy, but the Argive plan could only work if they thought other cities were observing the month correctly.
Reading around makes me think there is a huge pool of material which relates to science but doesn’t fit the usual narratives of history of science waiting to be analysed. In fact a lot of scientific texts have never had English translations published. If you’re science-literate and interested in history there’s probably plenty of basic research that you can do.
