Book Description

This study of archaeoastronomy looks at more than 2,500 communal tombs and sanctuaries from around the Mediterranean. After a brief discussion of Hoskin's aims and the methodology for his fieldwork, individual chapters focus on evidence from particular regions: Malta, Gozo, the Balearics, Iberia, southern France, Corsica and Sardinia, Sicily and Pantelleria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. The author concludes that in most of these regions the monuments faced sunrise, or more generally the sun when it was rising or climbing in the sky. Along the Mediterranean coast of France, however, there is a reverse sunset custom; in North Africa tombs faced downhill and in a Minoan cemetery on Crete all the tombs faced moonrise and look towards a mountain on whose peak was a sanctuary probably sacred to a lunar god. 264p, b/w figs and photos throughout, tables (Ocarina Books 2001) ` adorned with dozens of beautiful photographs, technical diagrams, and an extraordinary Corpus Mensurarum.....a living masterpiece in the field of archaeoastronomy ' - Juan Antonio Belmonte, Instituto de Astroficia de Canarias `