Below are a small selection of books that will give you a good background in understanding astro-archæology and megalithic science. Over the past fifty years or so, the abilities of ancient peoples to accurately survey the landscape and build megalithic structures that could accurately chart the movements of the sun, moon, planets and stars, and particularly the 'death-star' comets and their debris streams, has slowly come to be appreciated by a wider general public. Some of the books below were landmarks in this greater awareness, whilst others are recent works by researchers following in the footsteps of the pioneers. Collectively they paint a radically different picture of the past to the one we are offered in our schools, colleges and universities. Who is right and who is wrong? ...
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"Vincent Malmstrom has written a wonderfully entertaining book stuffed full of facts on the Mesoamerican systems of calendrical accounting. I had no idea the history of their calendars went so far back, nor that they were so widely used by such a great number of civilizations. His theories fill in where the facts leave off, as most studies on ancient cultures must, and the facts support his hypotheses. Malmstrom's theories on the origin of the calendar are quite different in some aspects than those of scholars before him -- one major difference is that he does not believe the Olmec developed the calendar."
"America's Stonehenge sits atop Mystery Hill in North Salem, New Hampshire. It is an acre of stone structures surrounded by a 12-acre calendar. Alignments and carbon dating indicate the site was built 4000 years ago. In this book the authors explore the historical and prehistoric clues left behind at the archaeology site once described as a 'mystery wrapped in an enigma'. The history of the site is examined and traced from the clues left behind from visitors, residents and researchers, and how that has led to today's research and the current interpretation of the evidence."
"Historical astronomical records can play an important role in modern research, especially in the case of ancient Chinese observational data: sunspot and aurora records are important for the study of solar variability; solar and lunar eclipse records for the study of the Earth's rotation; records of Comet Hally for the study of orbital evolution; "guest star" records for the study of supernova remnants; planetary conjunction records for research in astronomical chronology. In the past, Western scientists have not been able to exploit these valuable data fully because the original records were difficult to gather and interpret, and complete English translations have not been available. East-Asian Archaeoastronomy is the first comprehensive translation into English of such historical records for modern research."
"A reconstruction of the Chinese sky of two thousand years ago, based on analysis of the first star catalogue in China and other sources. Presented in six well-sized star maps for 100 BC, it is especially important for the history of astronomy. The Han sky, with five times more constellations than Ptolemy knew, reflects diverse human activities. The way in which constellations were grouped discloses a systematic cosmology, uniting universe and the state. The work of the three Han schools is comparable to Ptolemy's Almagest. With three detailed Appendices on the constellations of the three schools, well illustrated to demonstrate the relation between sky and human society, this book is valuable not only for astronomy historians and sinologists, but in general for scholars interested in the ancient cultures of Asia."
"This book interweaves astronomy, mythology, and anthropology to explore what the universe means to us and what it meant to our ancestors. Aveni also deftly illustrates the influence of our culture and beliefs on the path of scientific discovery, tracing the rise and fall of astronomy as blown by the prevailing winds of religious, philosophical, and political change. Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, seeks here to integrate--in his view, reintegrate--the rational universe with a more comforting model that takes into account "the interrelationship between matter and spirit." Such ancient astronomically inclined peoples as the Babylonians and the Mayans, he argues, made direct connections between events in the night sky and those on earth, and hence between nature and culture. The Mayans, for example, used their observations of the path of Venus to create a culturally useful myth about planting."
"Looking beyond the origins of Stonehenge to the origins of the culture that produced it, Rodney Castleden debunks many of the popular myths surrounding the monument and its builders. Castleden shows, for example, that Stonehenge was not built by the Druids, nor was its Heel Stone used to mark the position of the midsummer sunrise. Castleden examines the Stonehenge people's material culture as well as their social, political and religious structures to present a convincing interpretation of Stonehenge's cultural context and symbolic meaning."
"Stonehenge, the megalithic monument in southern England that dates in its Bronze Age phase to 2000BC, attracts more than a million tourists each year. The region includes the remains of sizeable wooden buildings, and this work shows that it was indeed its own city, the metropolitan centre of a powerful kingdom heretofore unsuspected. That city is reconstructed here from the archaeological evidence - royal palace, banquet hall and tomb, among other buildings. In passing, the text demolishes the popular theory that Stonehenge served as a prehistoric astronomical observatory. It rather advances a political theory grounded in cultural continuities that carry forward into the early Iron Age, best documented in ancient Ireland."
"Avebury, less than 20 miles from its more famous neighbor, Stonehenge, is rich in symbols linked to pre-Christian Goddess religions. This book reveals the wonders of the site, the largest and most complex prehistoric monument in Britain, through a lavishly illustrated guided tour encompassing history, archaeology, spirituality, and art."
"Who built Avebury and Stonehenge? Why and when were more than 600 stone circles, and thousands of barrows and cairns, erected in prehistoric Britain? What were they used for and what do they tell us about the beliefs and culture of their builders? Riddles in Stone is a history of the extraordinary variety of answers that have been given to these questions, by amateurs and professionals, archaeologists and astronomers, mystics and systems theorists. The puzzles that intrigued the antiquaries John Aubrey and William Stukeley, and the gentlemen barrow diggers of the nineteenth century, are in some ways still as elusive today as they were in the seventeenth century."
