Lighting up dark Moon: ethnographic templates for testing paired alignments on the Sun and the Moon

Recent research in archaeology interprets North West European late Neolithic and early Bronze Age monuments as
addressing an earlier and resilient ritual code of ancestral huntergatherers.
Recent palaeoanthropology
suggests
that these huntergatherers
possessed a unitary cosmology. The sexstrike
model predicts this cosmology was tied to
the rhythms of the moon, with particular symbolic potency attached to dark moon. This paper suggests that solilunar
alignments at later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monument are best interpreted attempted to preserve and
estrange ancient lunar rituals within an emerging solar cosmology. Stonehenge 3iiv,
as one spectacular example of
a whole class of monuments with similar main alignments, doubles winter sunset with southern minor standstill
moonsets which synchronises the longest night with dark moon. This finding fatally weakens other interpretations
that prioritise summer, risings and full moon.

Citation:
Sims, L. (2007) ‘Lighting up dark Moon: ethnographic templates for testing paired alignments on the Sun and the Moon’ In: Lights and shadows in cultural astronomy : proceedings of the SEAC 2005: Isili, Sardinia, 28 June to 3 July, edited by Mauro Peppino Zedda and Juan Antonio Belmonte. Published by Associazione Archeofila Sarda, Isili, Italy, 2007, p.309.