Tombs, Temples and Their Orientations

This book presents and analyzes the measurements of temples and communal tombs of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, carried out during a dozen years of fieldwork in Portugal, Spain, the Balearics, southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Sicily, Pantelleria, North Africa and Crete. The e [...]
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This book presents and analyzes the measurements of temples and communal tombs of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, carried out during a dozen years of fieldwork in Portugal, Spain, the Balearics, southern France, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Sicily, Pantelleria, North Africa and Crete. The evidence is summarized at the end of the book, giving the orientations of some three thousand tombs and temples, a number of which have since been destroyed by mechanized land-clearance. The author concludes that in most 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, a reverse sunset custom developed, while in North Africa at least some of the tombs faced downhill. The book concludes with a study of a Minoan cemetery on Crete where all tombs faced moonrise and look towards a mountain on whose peak was a sanctuary probably sacred to a lunar god.