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key edits to Archaeoastronomy article

fringe balance 3 online since 15:23 March 31, following 3 deletions by Alun and 3 restores by me. First version posted online at 23:11 March 30

fringe balance 2b everything in section after footnote 108 was erased by Alun Salt at 20:27 March 24 with synopsis rv and deletion of pre-Clovis material from Fringe Archaeoastronomy as it's not Archaeoastronomy. See talk on Precursors and Fringe Archaeoastronomy

fringe balance 2a everything in section after footnote 106 new by Scott Monahan at 21:59 March 22 with synopsis add perspective and balance, what is fringe vs. mainstream, Smithsonian archaeologist Stanford on how brethren can chill novel investigations, TIME Magazine on straightjacket of archaeological dogma, first sentence reworked by Steve McCluskey within half and hour as alternate definition to include pseudoarchaeology, peer review and journals as internal WP topical links

fringe balance 1 everything in section after paragraph ending in the word claims was erased by Steve McCluskey at 20:11 on March 21 with synopsis rv off topic discussion then edit skirmish ending at 20:49 with Steve McCluskey synopsis OK, Fell is out

Reisenauer included in history as it has appeared since 20:20 March 24 with minor repairs, first added by Scott Monahan at 18:12 March 23 with synopsis contextual clarification Reisenauer's account of the Egyptian metrology debate which influenced UK astronomers to write about the Great Pyramid years before Lockyer, otherwise cited as UK's first a.a.

History open

In 1777, two hundred years before Michell wrote the above, there were no archaeoastronomers and there were no archaeologists, but there were astronomers and antiquarians.

And way back in 1646 when Oxford professor of astronomy John Greaves published on his Egyptian pyramid surveys, no one imagined Great Britain would wrestle over the Great Pyramid two centuries later in a fractious, nationalistic debate enduring decades. The French metric system was threatening to replace familiar English measures in the late 1800's. So when Scotland's Astronomer Royal Charles Piazzi Smyth surveyed the Great Pyramid and determined the British inch to be all but identical to the pyramid inch, traditional Britain seemed relieved and vindicated. Yet the belief by Piazzi Smyth and others that this measurement was decreed by God shocked science into a reformation of sorts. Astronomer Richard Anthony Proctor, a prolific author and international lecturer, blasted Piazzi Smyth's thesis in his 1883 book The Great Pyramid: Observatory, Tomb and Temple. Proctor quoted from a commentary on Plato's Timaeus:

For we learn from Proclus that the pyramids of Egypt (which, according to Diodorus, had existed 3,600 years before his history was written, about 8 B.C.) terminated above in a platform, from which priests made their celestial observations.

Astronomy had matured and was on the verge of diversifying. Great Britain's metrology debate was a catalyst for novel scientific specialties as the antiquarian age was drawing to a close.

• Reisenauer, E.M. (2003). "The battle of the standards: great pyramid metrology and British identity, 1859-1890". Historian -Albuquerque then Allentown-. 65:4. Michigan State University Press: 931–979. {{cite journal}}: Text "cite web" ignored (help)

• Proctor, R.A. (1883). The Great Pyramid: Observatory, Tomb, and Temple. R. Worthington, New York, NY. {{cite book}}: Text "cite web" ignored (help)

Alun Salt

Beware, he attempts to tie Ogham-in-America to pre-Clovis simply because both imply pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. This is absurdity. The eras are different, I know it and he knows it. The reason the BBC article has relevance is that Smithsonsian archaeologist Dennis Stanford speaks to the issue of institutional intimidation toward archaeologists who may think different. Bold and enlightened archaeologists who consider looking at things objectively, rather than carry the baggage of decades of dogma, are to be congratulated for acting as true scientists. Those who twist logic and filter out all the evidence they want to ignore shame the name of science.

Salt intentionally diminishes references and people he doesn't agree with. He did it with Vine Deloria, Jr. Salt works hard to diminish David H. Kelley's conditional respect for Barry Fell, supporting a belief there is Ogham in America and Kelley's admonition to fellow archaeologists they refuse to recognize evidence of an Old World presence in the New World before Columbus. Salt instead wants to focus on Kelley's disagreement over the authenticity of WV Ogham and hammers away on this isolated crusade wihtout acknowledging the positives. Salt rails against historian Reisenauer's article as isolated to metrology, when clearly it addresses a profound, lengthy and intense debate over British Identity that moved science forward from 1859-1890. Alun views the BBC transcript as nothing more than a discussion of the Solutrean hypothesis, when, in fact, a reading of the contents describes wacky world of justice among archaeologists with their heads in the sand who would eat their own rather than show any genuine intellectual curiosity over new evidence below the Clovis layer. There's a lot more to say about how much Alun distort the facts. When Alun debates, his modus operandi is irrationality, a refusal to get the point, superficiality for his expedience only, and a careless disregard for evidence he feels justified in ignoring. If this is a man of science, academic review committees need to review the Talk log on the archaeoastronomy article to judge his credibility. Oh yeah, he's a big cheerleader to keep archaeoastronomy under the thumb of archaeologists, and archaeologists will consider him a hero. But the transparancy of his motives is clear to anyone outside the brotherhood of this mutual admiration society. Science is nobler than that.

Alun's agenda is succeeding. He's entitled himself and empowered himself to overlord the archaeostronomy article. And as of April 9, he's getting away with it, very nicely.

The Politics of Archaeoastronomy

"The problem is in the fact that there are influences, but they don't show up in 'dirt archaeology.' Basically, they show up in ideological materials: mythology, astronomy, calendrics. These are precisely the areas which are hardest to deal with archaeologically. And so they don't get much attention from traditional archaeologists." -- University of Calgary professor emeritus of archaeology David H. Kelley quoted in The Atlantic, January 2000.

Not everyone believes archaeology should control archaeoastronomy. Such dissension irritates many archaeologists who presume their primary authority over this hybrid science's realm. Archaeology and astronomy are strange bedfellows. The first looks deeper and deeper into the ground for answers. 180 degrees opposed is the second's perspective, farther and farther into space. Astronomy is visionary and dynamic, frequently updating its knowledge base. In the same year of 2006 while the International Astronomical Union (IAU) our solar system, TIME magazine scolded archaeology for "a dogma that has kept it in an intellectual straitjacket since Franklin Roosevelt was President". This dogma is a widely-defended institutional belief within archaeology and its parent science, anthropology, that no pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact with North America occurred until Columbus, with the notable exceptions at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, where the Vikings of a millenium ago established camp for a short time. The Smithsonian's chief archaeologist Dennis Stanford's Solutrean hypothesis has rattled most of his colleagues. Stanford and Dr. Jim Adovasio of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute have been investigating what's below the eleven thousand year old layer of the first Clovis points in all of the lower 48 states and much of Central America. They have found archaeological evidence of a European influence five thousand years earlier. But Stanford notes along with the investigations comes collegial intimidation: "When you dig deeper than Clovis a lot of people do not report it because they're worried about the reaction of their colleagues." A tendency to suppress other distasteful evidence, such as selective AmerIndian ethnologies used for interpretting North American archaeoastronomy in the centuries just preceding Columbus, may be another profound blindspot. Native American activist Vine Deloria, Jr., a member of the Standing Rock Sious tribe of North Dakota and a professor at the University of Colorado, claims reverse racism is at work:

There's no effort to ask the tribes what they remember of things that happened. Numerous tribes do say that strange people doing this or that came through our land, visited us, and so on. Or they remember that we came across the Atlantic as refugees from some struggle, then came down the St. Lawrence River, and so forth. There's a great reluctance among archaeologists and anthropologists to break centuries-old doctrine and to take a look at something new.

It is no real surprise, therefore, archaeologists reject claims of non-indigeneous archaeoastronomy in the American heartland as documented on the vernal equinox of 1987 by CBS News. Astronomer Rollin Gillespie who was instrumental in launching NASA, helped design the Saturn V rocket engines for the Apollo mission, and was lead mathematician in plotting the trans-lunar injection route than sent men to the moon and safely returned them to earth, volunteered in his retirement years interpreting and validating some unconventional archaeoastronomy in southeastern Colorado. In some cases, the perspectives of an astronomer may serve to better interpret archaeoastronomy than those who refuse to investigate what they refuse to believe is possible.

• Pollock, R. (1997–2008). "Stones of Wonder".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)

• Stengel, M. (2000). "The Diffusionists Have Landed". The Atlantic.

• Fortune, J. (2002). "Stone Age Columbus - transcript". BBC.

• McNamara, B. (1987). "Evening News with Dan Rather, March 23, 1987". CBS News.

• McGlone, W.R. and Leonard, P.M. (1987). Ancient Celtic America. Panorama West Books. ISBN 0-914330-90-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

1. Reisenauer, E.M. 2003
2. Proctor, R.A. 1883
3. Stengel, M. 2000
4. Pollock, R., 1997-2008
5. Lemonick, M. and Dorfman, A., 2006
6. Fortune, J. 2002
7. Stengle, M. 2000
8. McNamara, B. 1987
9. McGlone, W.R. and Leonard, P.M., 1987