Using the Significant Horizons Methodology to Determine Potential Astronomical Use of Aboriginal Stone Arrangements

Abstract

A novel methodology, which we call Significant Horizons, ranks Aboriginal cultural sites according to their potential for astronomical utilisation. This is done by taking into consideration a cultural site’s location and position within the environment and examines the surrounding horizon profile from that place. We rank each site on the number of solar, lunar and stellar alignments that occur on ‘notches’ and ‘points’ along accurate and realistic computer-generated horizon profiles using the horizon software package. Here, we examine 24 aboriginal stone arrangement sites within New South Wales, Australia, to statistically determine whether these sites could serve an astronomical function al..