Abstract
Of the three great cultures of the ancient eastern Mediterranean — the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Minoan — we have considerable knowledge of the astronomy of the first two through their documents (see relevant sections of this Handbook). Very little written material, however, has survived from Minoan Crete, but the evidence of other impressive archaeological discoveries implies that the inhabitants were on a par with their neighbors and had made similar advances in astronomy. In lieu of written sources, we have used the methods of archaeoastronomy to recover as much as possible about Minoan astronomy. In short, these are measuring the orientations of walls and their opposite horizons at a representative selection of monuments, analyzing the measurements statistically, and comparing the results with digital reconstruction of the positions of significant celestial bodies for the time when the walls were built.
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Acknowledgments
For their generous financial support, we thank the following organizations: the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Gunvor and Josef Anér Foundation, the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, the Magn. Bergvall Foundation, and the Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation. We also thank the Greek Archaeological Service for permission to study the sites in Crete and the personnel at the Swedish Institute at Athens for their help in many ways. We are indebted to Peter E. Blomberg for publishing the small finds from the peak sanctuaries.
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Blomberg, M., Henriksson, G. (2015). Minoan Astronomy. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_141
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_141
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