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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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National Geographic and Celts
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gorseddphungus
185 posts

Orientations and other patterns
Mar 15, 2006, 19:04
oh i am sure hoskin or someone else has done that job already, do you have any idea who has looked into this in ireland? yourself perhaps?

Some years ago I did this in Portugal (also a vast majority E/SE like in Spain) and more recently in Germany (where things are far more chaotic, though generally following a pattern). My view is that the further north you go, the less chances you have of reaching an agreement regarding solar orientation and that's maybe because of extreme northern latitudes and , perhaps, fewer chances of seeing the sunrise at the time of the winter solstice, though this last one is dubious, as it was perhaps even more important to be able to predict the sun's movements 'blindly' in bad weather for a good agricultural sun festival to carry out its enormous tasks of bringing fertility back to the tribe and the land at the right time.

Am I right in saying that only a certain kind of Irish graves look north? isn't it predominantly the horned ones (ie court tombs) ? There is also bound to be more 'dissent' among the biggest or the smallest cairns in the scale ? (considering that we are dealing with the same time scales)

We should also remember that it was vital for the ancients to 'marry' sun and moon so as to balance the months of the year properly if the right account was to continue. It's what we do unconsciously today with the leap year. Different cultures had different methods (eg an extra month, extra days, etc). So in different latitudes various festivals must have been extremely important on periods of 7-9 years depending on the moon, and correct me if i am wrong, the orientations must have varied according to the latitude.

This is of course valid only where the culture at a certain time still followed certain agricultural patterns. And those patterns varied with the centuries until they faded. And also, we tend to FORGET that many megalith builders must have been pre-/proto-or even entirely NON-agricultural, hence the variations. However, it is quite likely that most of agricultural europe in different latitudes followed the same rituals, like you still find equivalent (almost equal) pagan festivals in bulgaria or iberia, in britain or in poland.

Of course, I am also very aware of tremendous co-habitation of smaller and bigger graves with more or lesser materials/inhumations/cremations belonging to the same megalithic periods which may well denote social differences bigger than we think and it is possible that orientations were only valid for a certain group of graves, maybe the 'important' ones. But the fact that it DOES happen to many is a sign of deliberate construction, that there was no nihilism in their building, like with say, early christian or muslim buildings.
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