Decoding Astronomy in Art and Architecture

Decoding Astronomy in Art and Architecture
Author: Marion Dolan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2021-09-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030765113

For centuries, our ancestors carefully observed the movements of the heavens and wove that astronomical knowledge into their city planning, architecture, mythology, paintings, sculpture, and poetry. This book uncovers the hidden messages and advanced science encoded within these sacred spaces, showing how the rhythmic motions of the night sky played a central role across many different cultures. Our astronomical tour transports readers through time and space, from prehistoric megaliths to Renaissance paintings, Greco-Roman temples to Inca architecture. Along the way, you will investigate unexpected findings at Lascaux, Delphi, Petra, Angkor Wat, Borobudur, and many more archaeological sites both famous and little known. Through these vivid examples, you will come to appreciate the masterful ways that astronomical knowledge was incorporated into each society’s religion and mythology, then translated into their physical surroundings. The latest archaeoastronomical studies and discoveries are recounted through a poetic and nontechnical narrative, revealing how many longstanding beliefs about our ancestors are being overturned. Through this celestial journey, readers of all backgrounds will learn the basics about this exciting field and share in the wonders of cultural astronomy.

Spatial Theories for the Americas

Spatial Theories for the Americas
Author: Fernando Luiz Lara
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2024-11-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 082299156X

To study the built environment of the Americas is to wrestle with an inherent contradiction. While the disciplines of architecture, urban design, landscape, and planning share the fundamental belief that space and place matter, the overwhelming majority of canonical knowledge and the vernacular used to describe these disciplines comes from another, very different, continent. With this book, Fernando Luiz Lara discusses several theories of space—drawing on cartography, geography, anthropology, and mostly architecture—and proposes counterweights to five centuries of Eurocentrism. The first part of Spatial Theories for the Americas offers a critique of Eurocentrism in the discipline of architecture, problematizing its theoretical foundation in relation to the inseparability of modernization and colonization. The second part makes explicit the insufficiencies of a hegemonic Western tradition at the core of spatial theories by discussing a long list of authors who have thought about the Americas. To overcome centuries of Eurocentrism, Lara concludes, will require a tremendous effort, but, nonetheless, we have the responsibility of looking at the built environment of the Americas through our own lenses. Spatial Theories for the Americas proposes a fundamental step in that direction.

Decoding Astronomy in Maya Art and Architecture

Decoding Astronomy in Maya Art and Architecture
Author: Marion Dolan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-12-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9783031610912

The exciting discoveries and newest revelations in the field of archeoastronomy present fascinating examples of the importance of astronomy to the ancient Maya Civilization. Through technological advancements made in the archeoastronomy community, this book will allow you to uncover a time capsule from an ancient past. In a clear and comprehensible manner you will read about art and architecture from various important Maya cities, drawn from diverse time periods and from different geographical areas of Mesoamerica. The topics covered include new findings in wide variety of fields; including the history's of astronomy, science, art, architecture, literature and religion. You will explore in this book how the motions of the heavens were closely watched and notated by Maya astronomers and how those celestial objects determined the patterns of everyday life, religious rites, community festivals, agriculture, even birth and death! This book will open your mind to a deeper awareness and an even greater admiration for the Maya ingenuity in preserving their astronomical knowledge and passing it on to assist future generations. These latest findings will broaden our perception of the Maya cultures of the Pre-classic and their development through the Classic period and the remarkable changes that occurred throughout their 3000 years of history.

The Power of Stars

The Power of Stars
Author: Bryan E. Penprase
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2017-05-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319525972

Completely revised and updated, this new edition provides a readable, beautifully illustrated journey through world cultures and the vibrant array of sky mythology, creation stories, models of the universe, temples and skyscrapers that each culture has created to celebrate and respond to the power of the night sky. Sections on the archaeoastronomy of South Asia and South East Asia have been expanded, with original photography and new research on temple alignments in Southern India, and new material describing the astronomical practices of Indonesia, Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries. Beautiful photographs of temples in India and Asia have been added, as well as new diagrams explaining the alignment of these structures and the astronomical underpinnings of temples within the Pallava and Chola cultures. From new fieldwork in the Four Corners region of North America, Dr. Penprase has included accounts of Pueblo skywatching and photographs of ceremonial kivas that help elucidate the rich astronomical knowledge of the Pueblo people. The popular “Archaeoastronomy of Skyscrapers” section of the book has been updated as well, with new interpretations of skyscrapers in Indonesia, Taiwan and China.With the rapid pace of discovery in astronomy and astrophysics, entirely new perspectives are emerging about dark matter, inflation and the future of the universe. The Power of Stars puts these discoveries in context and describes how they fit into the modern perspective of cosmology, which has arisen from the universal human response to the sky that has inspired both ancient and modern cultures.

Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?

Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?
Author: Barry Blesser
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2009-09-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 026251317X

How we experience space by listening: the concepts of aural architecture, with examples ranging from Gothic cathedrals to surround sound home theater. We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and "hear" the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture's attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to "see" objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling. Integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines—including architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering, and many others—Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? establishes the concepts and language of aural architecture. These concepts provide an interdisciplinary guide for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how space enhances our well-being. Aural architecture is not the exclusive domain of specialists. Accidentally or intentionally, we all function as aural architects.

Toward a Global Middle Ages

Toward a Global Middle Ages
Author: Bryan C. Keene
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 160606598X

This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.

How to Speak Dog

How to Speak Dog
Author: Aline Alexander Newman
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2013
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 142631373X

A guide about how to understand a dog's body language and behavior illustrates such key concepts as barking, howling, panting, bared teeth, and wagging tail --

The 2012 Story

The 2012 Story
Author: John Major Jenkins
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2010-10-14
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 158542823X

From the pioneering author who helped introduce the question of 2012 into the global spiritual community comes an epic exploration of the authentic origins and meaning of this portentous date. Drawing from his own groundbreaking research (including his involvement in the modern reconstruction of Mayan 2012 cosmology), John Major Jenkins has created the crucial guide to 2012, surveying its roots in Mayan cosmology, modern astronomy, ancient prophecy, and metaphysical philosophy and exploring why it has become a focal point for millions today.