WHAT IS A LUNAR STANDSTILL (II)?

LIONEL SIMS

IN

Fabio Silva, Kim Malville, Tore Lomsdalen and Frank Ventura (eds.),
The Materiality of the Sky: Proceedings of SEAC 2014,
Lampeter: Sophia Centre Press.
2 Lionel Sims

WHAT IS A LUNAR STANDSTILL (II)?

Lionel Sims

ABSTRACT: Fifty years after Thom’s rediscovery of lunar standstills there remains no
scholarly consensus over their properties or meaning. This paper critiques the six main
theories of lunar standstills extant within archaeoastronomy with a view to contributing
to a common conceptual vocabulary within the discipline. Prehistoric monument
alignments on lunar standstills have variously been and currently are interpreted for
horizon range, perturbation event, crossover event, eclipse prediction, solstice full moon
and the solarization of the dark moon. Tests of ascending power that draw upon
positional astronomy, monument design, archaeology and anthropology evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of each theory.

Thom’s publications between 1955 and 19901 galvanised a generation – with

horror amongst many archaeologists and inspiration for others, some of whom
began reconstructing the discipline of archaeoastronomy. However since the
1980’s an extended re-evaluation of his work within archaeoastronomy has
questioned and rejected many of his claims, while many archaeologists have
begun to embrace the evidence for prehistoric monuments’ ‘astronomical’
alignments. A complex interaction of ‘Popperian’ and ‘Kuhnian’ processes has
generated a combined movement away and towards Thom’s claim that many
monuments of prehistoric NW Europe were aligned on the sun’s solstices and
the moon’s standstills2. To unravel what has been lost and gained after half a
century of scholarly endeavour we need to re-examine the many properties of
‘astronomical’ alignments to trace their variable engagement by different
researchers.

A prehistoric monument alignment on the sun and of the moon is an

1 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thom [Accessed 8 December 2014] for

full list.
2 Alexander Thom, Megalithic Lunar Observatories (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
 What is a lunar standstill II 3

architectural arrangement of materials orientated on a horizon position locating

where either luminary rises or sets. At summer solstice the sun rises in the
north-east and sets in the north-west. Six months later at winter solstice the sun
rises in the south-east and sets in the south-west. For any given time period,
latitude and horizon altitude these horizon positions are fixed. From three days
before and after the solstice the unaided human eye can detect no change in the
sun’s horizon position. Each of the four solstice rise and set events therefore lasts
for one week in prehistory. Outside of the two weeks of both solstices, for about
5½ months, the sun’s horizon rise and set positions slowly begin to change
towards its greatest rate of daily change of over one solar diameter during the
equinoxes. A monument’s single solstice alignment therefore abstracts out just 1
horizon event lasting seven days out of a possible 353 (365-14+2) solar
alignments. While a severe selection of the sun’s movements, nevertheless these
horizon positions do not contradict and may act as proxies for the seasonal
changes marked by the full suite of the sun’s movements.

A monumental lunar alignment is a more complex matter and, in important

respects, quite different from a solar alignment. For while the moon also has
horizon range limits just as does the sun instead of being fixed they vary over
what we now know is an 18.61 year cycle. Thom identified this phenomenon as
the lunar standstills which every 9.3 years alternate between major and minor
standstills3. At the latitude of Stonehenge, during a major standstill of the moon
the moon’s orbiting plane about the earth is 5 degrees greater than the earth’s
equatorial plane (its declination). Once a sidereal month, every 27.3 days, as the
moon completes its circulation of earth, for just two moments it rises and sets
about 10° of azimuth further north and south on the horizon than the sun ever
reaches during its solstices4. After a period of about a year the moon’s orbital
plane about the earth begins to reduce from 5° above the earth’s equatorial plane
about the sun to, 9.3 years later, 5° beneath the equatorial plane. This minor
standstill’s horizon range limits are about 10° within the sun’s solstice positions,

3Thom, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, 19, 124, 173.

4Lionel Sims, ‘The Solarization of the Moon: Manipulated Knowledge at Stonehenge’,
Cambridge Archaeology Journal 16, no. 2 (2006): pp. 191-207, Figure 4, p. 198.
4 Lionel Sims

and for about a year for 13 times the moon returns to these ‘same’ positions. The
moon therefore has eight horizon limits unlike the sun’s four. Throughout its
18.6 year cycle the moon rises and sets on intermediate horizon positions
between the moon’s horizons extremes. A lunar alignment is therefore a
selection of just one horizon moment during one day or night out of about 27
days and nights. While like the sun a lunar alignment is therefore a selection
from all possible horizon positions, unlike the sun it is not a observation
repeated over the course of a week, but a one moment time lapsed observation
separated by periods of about 26-27 days. While it takes the moon 27.3 days to
circle the earth, during that time the earth is also moving around the sun.
Therefore its phase is 2.2 days an earlier phase than the previous lunar phase
alignment. An alignment on lunar standstill (sidereal) phases therefore present
in reverse sequence to when we view the moon’s phases over the course of a
synodic month5. Lastly there are very small differences in the position of the
maximum range limits of the standstill of the order of a few minutes of arc.
Modern heliocentric positional astronomy has shown that at different positions
in its orbit of earth these perturbations exhibit a regular sinusoidal alternation of
the order of about 10' of arc.

In summary, just like a solstice alignment a lunar standstill alignment is a

selection of a few horizon positions from its total rise or set positions, but this
alignment is not a simple proxy for other characteristics of the moon. Instead of
four solstice horizon positions there are eight lunar standstill horizon range
limits of the major and minor standstills, it’s sidereal properties are cryptic not
redundant, they reverse its lunar phases, and at its horizon limits exhibit small
perturbations. It is in the variable interpretation of these similarities and
differences between solstices and standstills that scholars in archaeoastronomy
have marked out six different theories of lunar standstills. There is therefore no
consensus within archaeoastronomy for how to interpret lunar standstills and
these divisions require resolution.

The majority view within archaeoastronomy is that prehistoric monument

builders engaged with lunar standstills to select for the moon’s extended

5 Sims, ‘The Solarization of the Moon’, Figure 5, p. 199.

 What is a lunar standstill II 5

horizon range displayed only during the major standstill of the moon.
Throughout this period of about a year for every thirteen or so days, and at the
latitude of Stonehenge, the moon reaches its northern and southern limit at
azimuths roughly 50° above and below the west-east line, which is about 10°
beyond the sun at its solstice horizon positions6. Between these moments the
moon touches the horizon in intermediate daily/nightly changes. These
intermediate positions pass the range limits of the minor standstill, which the
moon reaches 9.3 years later. Compared to the major standstill the minor
standstill has little significance according to the width of its horizon range. The
solarist presumption behind this choice is that the moon at a major standstill is a
‘superior sun’ by virtue of wide horizon range alone. Authors who adopt this
view emphasise the period of 18.61 years as the time span of lunar standstills.

If this view of the prehistoric appropriation of lunar standstills is correct, then it

would predict that no monuments in prehistory would have alignments on the
minor standstill of the moon. This is incorrect. Ruggles7 has shown that Scottish
recumbent and West Scotland rows have alignments on both the southern major
and minor standstills, as has Burl8 shown for the Clava cairns. The rejection of
minor standstills therefore does not meet the requirements of the best standards
in archaeoastronomy field methods and indicates limited theoretical models or
extra-scientific preoccupations.

The second type of archaeoastronomy theory considers the minor standstill as

requiring special explanation separate to that of the major standstill of the moon
of which there are currently two – North’s9 alternating perturbations and Silva’s
and Pimenta’s10 crossover model. North showed that while in plan view
Stonehenge is gaps surrounding an empty space, paradoxically in elevation

6 Sims, Solarization of the Moon, Figure 4, p. 198.

7 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 95, 74-6.
8 Aubrey Burl, ‘By the light of the cinerary moon: chambered tombs and the astronomy of

death’, in C. L. N. Ruggles and A. W. Whittle, eds., Astronomy and Society in Britain During
the Period 4000-1500 BC (Oxford: BAR, 1981), pp. 243-74.
9 John North, Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and Cosmos (London: Harper Collins, 1996).

10 Fabio Silva and Fernando Pimenta, ‘The Crossover of the Sun and the Moon’, Journal of

the History of Astronomy xliii (2012): pp. 191-208.

6 Lionel Sims

view it is an ‘obscuration’ device of seemingly near-solid stone when

approaching it from the north-east uphill along the Avenue and past the Heel
Stone. Standing by the Heel Stone two windows can be seen one above the other
framed by the Grand Trilithon and the outer-circle lintels. From the right hand
side of the Heel Stone the lower window frames the setting winter solstice
sunsets and from the left hand side of the Heel Stone the upper window
captures the setting southern minor standstill moonsets. North considered these
two alignments separately and suggested that the southern minor standstill
moonset perturbations would have been seen in this upper window zigzagging
left and right four or so times over the course of a year. North suggested that
since the sun does not do this when at its solstice horizon range limit, then the
people of Stonehenge would have considered this property of the southern
minor standstill magical and worthy for their monument11.

It is not clear that the moon’s perturbations will be observed at Stonehenge. The
architecture of the monument does not assist such high fidelity observations.
From the Heel Stone the dimensions of the upper window would have been a
height of about 10' and a width about one degree. Since the lunar disc is about
30' in diameter this upper window would not have framed the full moon nor its
40' of azimuth perturbation range. That is assuming the perturbations could be
seen. The distance from the Heel Stone to the Grand Trilithon is about 88 metres
which is not enough to provide the resolution to discern the movements of a few
minutes of arc of any (obscured) edge of the lunar disc. But as the moon is
constantly changing its declination, and since the moment of the geocentric
declination extreme is generally independent of the moment when the moon
meets the horizon, by the time the moon is on any horizon the moon’s
declination is at a different value from its limit. There will therefore be no
regular zigzag horizon movement of the moon at its minor standstill limit but
irregular movements12. Finally, every standstill at its horizon limit, whether
major or minor, north or south, rises or sets, exhibits similar perturbations to
that of the southern minor standstill moonsets, so either all of these are equally

11North, Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and Cosmos, pp. 441- 474.

12Lionel Sims, ‘What is a lunar standstill? Problems of accuracy and validity in the Thom
paradigm’. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 6, no. 3 (2007): pp. 157-63.
 What is a lunar standstill II 7

‘magical’ or none of them are. North defines the minor standstill by the
boundary oscillations of the lunar horizon range limits, and the major standstill
by its greater horizon range than that of the sun. This model also therefore
emphasises the period of 18.61 years which separates major standstills.

Silva’s and Pimenta’s solstice lunar crescent crossover model, the second within
this group, offers an alternative explanation to that of alignments on the minor
standstill. They demonstrate that during summer and autumn the first crescent
moon always sets to the left of sunset, but within a period of 150 days over
winter the moon switches and sets to the right of the sun. The pattern of
alignments for this crossover event is a non-Guassian distribution with a
marked modal frequency which coincides with that of the southern minor
standstill of the moon. Any monument with an alignment on the minor
standstill would, the authors suggest, be better explained by this annual event.
According to the authors the preferred function for the crossover event would
have been to mark annual calendrical calculations, while the major standstill of
the moon is best explained by its wide horizon range13.

While the authors choose the nomenclature of a solstice and first crescent moon
crossover, during the period of the 2014/5 minor standstill of the moon the
actual date of the crossover is the 12th December, not the 21st December at the
winter solstice. Not just the time but the place of the crossover event is also
highly variable. While the azimuth band for the range limit of the minor
standstill is only about 40´, that of the first crescent winter crossover horizon
event is spread over an azimuth range of about 26° - a full forty times greater
than that of the minor standstill. The Stonehenge axial upper window which
captures the southern minor standstill moonsets would not be able to capture
the vast majority of these crossovers.

It remains to be explained why the non-Gaussian distribution of the first lunar

crescent crossover with the sun has a peak which coincides with the southern
minor standstill horizon moonsets. A crossover event is an amalgam of the
properties of two variables – the movements of the sun and those of the moon.

13 Silva and Pimenta, ‘The crossover of the sun and the moon’, 202 and 206.
8 Lionel Sims

To disentangle conjoint influences we need to elaborate their separate effects.

Consider first when the moon is at the southern minor standstill. For this year
and adjacent years the moon’s horizon range does not move much further south
than when within 10° of azimuth or so of the sun’s range on the horizon. Only
when the sun starts to leave its winter solstice declination and begins to set
further north on the horizon does it approach close enough to the moon for a
crossover to occur. Therefore while the event will coincide or be close with the
southern minor standstill declination it cannot take place at the winter solstice.
Since Stonehenge has a lower window aligned on winter solstice sunset the
crossover model cannot explain the monument’s conflation of the moon and the
sun. Now consider when the moon is at the major standstill. The moon then sets
much further south on the horizon than the sun ever reaches, but the moon’s
horizon movements from south to north take 13/14 days while those of the sun
take 6 months. The moon’s movements will now allow the crossover event to
take place when the sun is still at or close to its winter solstice horizon position,
but not at the horizon position of the southern minor standstill. Therefore this
event will coincide with a winter solstice declination but it cannot take place
when the moon is at the southern minor standstill declination. We now turn to
the moon’s movements when either expanding or contracting its horizon range
and can crossover with the sun. During this inter-standstill period, when the sun
has moved to the horizon position of the southern minor standstill about 6
weeks after the winter solstice, the moon will crossover the sun once it has left
its southern horizon limit. In both cases the sun is not the winter solstice sun and
neither is the moon the southern minor moon. In aggregate these separate effects
create the non-Gaussian distribution with a peak that coincides with the
southern minor standstill yet it will only rarely take place at winter solstice, most
frequently it will take place when the moon is not at the southern minor
standstill and it will never take place during the southern minor standstill at
winter solstice. Therefore a monument aligned on the minor standstill and the
solstice sun cannot be explained by the crossover model.

The third group of theories for lunar standstills identifies shared properties
between the major and the minor standstills and there are presently three
 What is a lunar standstill II 9

different theories with this approach. Thom14 suggested that monuments aligned
on both types of standstills were devices to predict lunar eclipses. In both cases
eclipses occur when the moon’s perturbations coincide and add to the horizon
range limits that occur every 9.3 years. Since the maximum perturbation only
very rarely occurs when the moon is on the horizon, Thom suggested that
‘elaboration devices’ were necessary to interpolate the precise moment of the
maximum. There is however no evidence for such devices and it would not be
possible to track these tiny horizon movements with low resolution
alignments15. Nevertheless, as these maximum perturbations always occur close
to the equinoxes, and as NW European late Neolithic/EBA prehistoric
monuments which conflate the moon with the sun choose the solstice sun and
not the equinoxes16, the monument builders appear to be avoiding an eclipsed
moon. Since an eclipsed moon is an interrupted full moon, it seems that the
monument builders were selecting for some aspect of an uninterrupted cycle of
lunar phases at their ritual centres.

The final two models current within the archaeoastronomy of lunar standstills
engage with the intrinsic properties of the moon’s phases rather than just their
horizon location. Ruggles suggests that the monument builders entrained their
monuments on lunar standstill full moons. Ruggles’ critique of Thom’s work
was based on a major field work exercise of five regional groups of monuments
in the British Isles. From the data emerged a strong preference for lunar
alignments on the southern lunar standstills, both major and minor, and
particularly onto settings rather than risings. Ruggles concluded that along these
alignments they would have observed the full moon setting17. A full moon does
present itself on these southern standstill alignments, but only at summer
solstice18. Since all of these monument groups also included alignments on the
winter solstice sunsets, not summer solstice, and since they paired the southern
standstill moons with the winter solstice, this could not have conflated full

14 Thom, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, 15.

15 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 63.
16 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 148-151.

17 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland 75, 96-98, 107, 128, 130, 138-9, 149,

154.
18 Sims, Solarization of the Moon, Figure 5, p. 199.
10 Lionel Sims

moon with the winter solstice. In keeping with the details of this architecture
design we need to ask the question of what happens when the two axial
alignments are considered as conflated alignments.

The final sixth model of lunar standstills addresses the emergent properties
from their combination with the sun’s solstices. During southern standstills,
both major and minor, at winter solstice the moon is always dark moon.
Conversely, during northern standstills, both major and minor, at summer
solstice the moon’s phases are once again dark moons. A full moon does occur
on the northern standstill, major and minor, alignments during winter, but
always about two weeks after the solstice, and vice versa on the southern
standstills19. This is an invariant property for all lunar standstills. However
extending this understanding to dark moon seems counter-intuitive for
observational astronomy – ‘...this makes no sense...[when] the moon is new, and
hence invisible...’20. It was probably for this reason that Ruggles characterised his
own field data with an emphasis on solstice and standstill alignments to the
south west as ‘anomalous’21. But adopting an ethnographic rather than
astronomical method towards the skyscape opens up an entirely new ‘sense’,
and Sims22 suggests they were for solarised dark moon rituals.

Sims’ model of lunar-solar conflation argues that a monument alignment on the

moon, unlike one on the sun, selects sidereal properties that reverses lunar
phases, attenuates a full suite of lunar phases in a time-lapsed observation
exercise spread over the course of a year, and culminates at winter and summer
solstices with dark moon at southern and northern lunar standstills respectively
every nine or so years. In short this model embraces all of the observed
characteristics of lunar standstills as a horizon alignment. This model is
anthropologically sensitive to the monument builder’s culture. They were
Neolithic cattle herders who had split with their Mesolithic hunter-gatherer
origins. Since hunters earn a wife through a life-time’s bride-service and cattle

19 Sims, Solarization of the Moon, Figure 5, p. 199.

20 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 247.
21 Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland, 142, 158.
22 Sims, Solarization of the Moon; Sims, What is a lunar standstill?
 What is a lunar standstill II 11

owners purchase a wife through a bride-price payment, this transition is fraught

with dislodging matrilineal rights in the interests of an emerging patrilineal
culture which prioritises the accumulation of cattle wealth. As monthly dark
moon menstrual seclusion rituals of matrilineal siblings were used by
Palaeolithic women to economically motivate prospective ‘husbands’ from other
clans, this deep-time respect for synchronising ritual and economic rhythms
with lunar phases would have emphasised dark moon as the moment to switch
on ritual power23. An alignment on a lunar standstill both continued to stage
rituals in synchrony with a dark moon but are now reversed-phased and
solarised according to a nine year cycle. It allows the manipulative combination
of the symbolism of formal continuity with dark moon rituals with the social
fact of reversal. The collectivised labour of monument building would function,
in part, to transcend the escalating social divisions and contradictory allegiances
that consequently flow from this profound social change. Since this model
draws upon demonstrable properties of both major and minor standstills, it
emphasises the nine or so years of separation between them as sets of reversed
lunar phases culminating in dark moon. Therefore the value of 18.61 years for the
periodicity of the nodal cycle is triply irrelevant for interpreting this prehistoric
monument building culture. A decimalised value from heliocentric celestial
mechanics is ethnocentrically inappropriate to interpreting a prehistoric
cosmology, it discounts the alternation between the major and the minor
standstills which follow a nine year timescale, and it does not include the
sequence of the reversed set of lunar phases leading to the synchrony of dark
moon with the solstices. Therefore according to this model, the correct timescale
would be a span of time of the 8-10 years, or ‘about nine years’, during which
each standstill exhibited the suite of characteristics of ‘an annualised reversed
phased moon culminating with dark moon’. This of course does not deny the
fact of the 18.61 year cycle of modern positional astronomy which we require for
our modern explanation of the phenomenon, but it could not have been the
monument builders understanding.

There are good sky-watching reasons for wanting a ritual timed for dark moon.

23Chris Knight, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (London: Yale,
1991).
12 Lionel Sims

It is true that a dark moon alignment makes little sense for lunar observations.
But with clear skies during the three days of dark moon within the seven days of
winter solstice a ritual can therefore take place during the longest darkest night
possible. Such a ritual will therefore allow a view of the greatest number of stars
possible to be seen by the naked eye, and also leads to seeing the reappearance
of first crescent moon as it begins to set on the western horizon. Both of these
vistas are well-attested in the ethnographic literature, in religious symbolism
and in mythic narratives. A solarised dark moon would therefore provide the
optimal context to stellar alignments found in any archaeoastronomy field data
and to the symbolic appropriation of the dialectical ‘birth’ of waxing crescent
moon as it ‘dies’ on the western horizon.

It may be thought that when dark moon coincides with the sun’s solstices
outside of the period of lunar standstills that this invalidates selecting this
conjunction for standstills alone. For example dark moons occurred during the
winter solstice week in 2003, 2011 and will do so in 2017. None of these are
standstill years. However the issue is that none of these occurrences could be
identified by a stable alignment spread over the course of a year or so. The
moon’s horizon range limits occupy two very small and stable parts of the
horizon only at the major and minor standstills. This is not possible during inter-
standstill years where the range limits are constantly changing. Only during a
standstill could an alignment on a horizon reversed suite of lunar phases
culminating in dark moon be enshrined into the axial centre of the monuments.

Another misunderstanding concerns the meshing of lunar phases with solstice

alternation repeating through all standstills. Since the standstill cycle recurs
every 18.61 years, and since this is an irregular number, repeating standstill
cycles will not coincide with the solstice cycles. The peaks and troughs in the
moon’s horizon movements will therefore migrate snake-like24 through the year
of each standstill and this would seem to invalidate the model’s claim that dark
moons will always coincide with solstice weeks during lunar standstills.
However the horizon range limits of the moon is determined by the association
of both the 18.61 year cycle of the rotation of the moon’s orbiting plane and by

24 With thanks to Thomas Gough, personal communication.

 What is a lunar standstill II 13

the moon’s position around the time of the equinoxes. The line of the nodes
must be at latitudes 0° and 180° and the moon must be in quadrature at latitudes
90° and 270°25. The standstill trend maximum and minimum values combine
with the equinox perturbations when the moon is at first or third quarter which
therefore always fixes dark moon at the time of the solstices. There will not
therefore be a precise synchronisation of the 9.3 year periodicity which will
identify the moment of the solarised dark moon, and the periodicity is better
expressed as ‘about nine years’26.

Only this last model can help to explain the archaeological and anthropological
details. The archaeological materiality model sees Stonehenge as part of an
integrated complex including avenues, river and the earth and wooden
Durrington Walls27. The archaeoastronomy of lunar-solar conflation explains
why not just Stonehenge, but also the Avebury monument complex
demonstrates that the axial alignments of stone monuments on the southern
standstills (minor at Stonehenge, major at Avebury) are paired with wooden
monuments aligned on the northern standstills (respectively major at
Durrington Walls and minor at the West Kennet Palisades)28. Both regional
complexes therefore alternated in opposite combinations by about nine-year
intervals, not 18.61 years, between the major and minor standstills.

This approach can be generalised to and tested by a wider domain of evidence.

The anthropological method of Levi-Strauss through his study of about 800
myths of the Amerindians reveals that sacred power, expressed as death and
resurrection rituals, would see monuments not as the beginnings of ‘astronomy’
and calendars but as ‘instruments of darkness’ – the time when the collective is
summoned to participate in a blood sacrifice ritual29. The focus on dark moon is
precisely the property of major and minor standstills once conflated with the
solstices. In the shift from Palaeolithic hunting cosmologies to Neolithic pastoral
societies, the anthropology clearly documents a process of socio-political

25 Alexander Thom, Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1978), 11.
26 Thom, Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany, Figures 2.1 and 2.1, pp. 12-13.

27 Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge (London: Simon and Schuster, 2012).

28 North, Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and Cosmos, 358-373.
29 Claude Levi-Strauss, From Honey to Ashes. Introduction to a science of mythology: 2 (New

York: Harper Row, 1973) 359-475.

14 Lionel Sims

reversal from horizontal bride service gift exchange systems to vertical bride
price inheritance. This process is particularly clear in the gradual transition from
hunting to pastoralism, which in turn is associated with the emergence of the
male monopolisation of ritual and age set systems 30. This is the social foundation
for the syncretism of an ancient egalitarian lunar cosmology conjoined with and
in the process of displacement by a stratifying and solarising religion.
Depending upon the extent of displacement of directly lunar aspects to a
culture’s cosmology, we would expect the world’s religious systems to reveal a
variety of local adaptations. The nine year cycle of the Cretan levy for 7
Athenian boys and girls to meet the bulls, the nine-yearly lunar standstill
Septeria Apollonian ritual re-enactment of the killing of the dragon Python at
Delphi31 and the 8/9 year Norse blood rituals of human sacrifice at Uppsala 32 all
fit the same alternating timescale to be found in prehistoric monument nine-
yearly lunar-solar alignments.

Contemporary ethnographies elaborate further transformations. A classic

example is the age set system of the Baruya in Papua New Guinea. These
highlanders practice pig husbandry, hunting and horticulture and initiate their
young men through a roughly nine-year cycle of ritualised death and
resurrection under the tutelage of the sacred power of the sun and the moon 33.
Those cultures with age-set systems have male social groups that cross-cut the
kinship system and control young men’s access to women through marriage by
strict initiation rituals. The age-sets largely follow an eight-year cycle through
the male initiation stages34. Such a social infra-structure is predisposed to adopt
a cosmology that coincides with this type of periodicity, of which the lunar-solar
cycle is one. Known as ‘little moon’ in many Amerindian cultures Venus’s eight
year cycle would also be an appropriate alternative/displacement to lunar

30 Lionel Sims, ‘Where is cultural astronomy going?’ In Fernando Pimenta (ed.) Stars and
Stones: voyages in archaeoastronomy and cultural astronomy – a meeting of different worlds.
Forthcoming.
31 Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (London: Penguin, 1992).

32 Goran Henrikkson, ‘The pagan Great Midwinter Sacrifice and the ‘royal’ mounds at

Old Uppsala’, http://www.astro.u.se/archast [consulted 8 December 2014].

33 Maurice Godelier, The Making of Great Men: male domination and power among the New

Guinea Baruya (Cambridge: UP, 1986).

34 Bernado Bernardi, Age Class Systems: social institutions and politics based on age

(Cambridge: UP, 1985); David Maybury-Lewis, ‘Age and Kinship: A Structural View’ in
D. I. Kertzer and J. Keith (eds.) Age and Anthropological Theory (London: Cornell UP, 1984).
 What is a lunar standstill II 15

standstills and fits the criteria for the further transformation of the proposed
lunar-solar transformational template35. The model is also consistent with
precursor Palaeolithic cosmological evidence. Bones and ivory dated from
33,000 to 12,000 BP have been found from west Europe to Africa inscribed with
non-decorative notational systems to track these lunar phases with an emphasis
on dark moon, and anthropological evidence suggests that one purpose of such
records was for Palaeolithic hunting cultures to track the human menstrual and
pregnancy cycles36.

If this model of a lunar transformation template withstands refutation then these

examples open the prospect for archaeoastronomy to find a ‘periodic table’ of
alignments that will map onto the world’s cosmologies and religions. The ‘Thom
paradigm’37 found solstice and standstill alignments in many prehistoric
monuments of NW Europe, and claimed that this was in the service of eclipse
prediction. After fifty years of research eclipse prediction has not been accepted
within archaeoastronomy but the remaining evidence of solar and lunar
alignments remain and still require decoding.

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