Early Bronze Age deep postholes alignments in Linsmeau pointing towards astronomical events
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-05-15

The site of Linsmeau is located at the foot of the plateaus in the middle of Belgium on a colluvial beach north of the Petite Gette River and at the end of its navigable zone. A series of 15 unusually deep rooted post holes were uncovered there. Though few in number, they are atypical and they all reach and bore into the underlying bedrock, at a depth of up to 1.4 metres. Their position, diameter and spacing, rule out the idea they could have been used as part of a building. All of the posts show clear evidence of being ripped out from their holes. In this, they differ from all the other posts found on the site. Five of these posts seemed to form a cross oriented to the cardinal points with a line coming from its centre towards the winter solstice sunrise. Since the 3D simulations done at the Boltzmann Institute in Vienna showed that these were too far away from these directions, the present study systematically studied the possible alignments from each post to the sky. The results of this study show something new: when considering two posts and an astronomical event as the third point of the line, alignments to both the summer solstice sunrise and sunset were discovered. Further alignments to the sun’s cross quarter rising and setting were also noted and three others were aimed towards the Major Lunar standstills (rising and setting). This paper will also consider whether this post setting really constitutes an observing site.
Archaeologists versus archaeoastronomers or new best buddies?

Frédéric Heller, Service Public de Wallonie; and Georg Zotti, LBI ArchPro, Vienna