ORIENTATIO AD SIDERA (OAS): HIGHLIGHTS OF A DECADE OF ARCHAEOASTRONOMICAL RESEARCH IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION AND BEYOND

Abstract

The OAS Project has been run with the support of the Spanish research funding agencies during the last dozen years. Within its framework, research on cultural astronomy has been developed for a series of ancient civilizations, from the Atlantic Islands to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, with the Meditterranean Sea as the principal axis of action of the project. A catalogue of studies has been performed in a set of cultures such as the Megalithic Phenomenon (González-García and Belmonte, 2010; Belmonte; González-García and Polcaro, 2013a), ancient Egypt (Belmonte and Shaltout, 2009; Belmonte, 2012), Middle East Bronze Age (notably on the Hittites: González-García and Belmonte, 2011) and Iron Age (notably on the Nabataeans: Belmonte, González-García and Polcaro, 2013b) civilizations and the Roman World (e.g. González-García, Rodríguez-Antón and Belmonte, 2014), among many others. In this essay a general scope of the project and a series of most interesting highlights will be presented. The evolutionary ties of the megalithic monuments of the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere, the pattern of orientation of Egyptian temples and skyscaping practices within the Hittite or Nabataean cultures, among others, will be briefly explored; including a comprehensive, statistical and comparative study of the orientation patterns of thousands of ancient monuments of the Mediterranean region (González-García and Belmonte, 2014). Finally, a sketch of our most recent, still ongoing, research will be a compelling and promising closing remark of our analysis.