Letters of Intent received in 2015

LoI 2017-264
THE ROAD TO THE STARS: INSAP Xth - Oxford XI - SEAC 25th Conference on Cultural Astronomy

Date: 18 September 2017 to 23 September 2017
Category: Non-GA Symposium
Location: Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Contact: Juan Antonio Belmonte (jba@iac.es)
Coordinating division: Division C Education, Outreach and Heritage
Other divisions:
Co-Chairs of SOC: Juan Antonio Belmonte (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, IAC)
A. César González García (Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, Incipit-CSIC)
Frank Prendergast (Dublin Institute of Technology, DIT)
Chair of LOC: A. César González García (Incipit-CSIC)

 

Topics

Cutural Astronomy (main topic of CAWG of CC3.)
World Heritage and Astronomy (main topic of CC4)
Archaeoastronomy
Ethnoastronomy
Astronomy in Art and Literature

 

Rationale

Astronomy as part of the culture and society has a clear social character that needs to be studied. Cultural Astronomy attempts to do so by exploring the way in which different societies across history and in present times deal with the issues where the sky is involved.

Santiago de Compostela is at the end of the most important European Pilgrimage route, the ‘Road to Santiago’ (Camino de Santiago). Compostela, from Latin Campus Stellae, can be translated as the ‘field of the steles’, but has also traditionally been nicknamed as the ‘Field of the Star’. Indeed, cultural and traditional astronomy has played a significant role in the configuration of the actual place of Santiago, a role that probably links with a deep and very old tradition of astronomy in the local culture across centuries and millennia (for instance, in Spain, the Milky Way is traditionally known as “El Camino de Santiago”). Such tradition has inspired artists, rulers and the like and we can now profit from the experience of a truly astronomical landscape with different layers of knowledge added at different epochs from the megalithic phenomenon to present time, including Bronze Age rock art and Medieval hierophanies in churches.

Such landscape and setting is the place we propose for the celebration of the INSAP IXth, Oxford XIth and SEAC XXVth Conference. We have already formal agreements with ISAAC, SEAC and the INSAP to celebrate a joint meeting for 2017 in Santiago, and we indeed think that it will be a great occasion for the celebration, for the first time in the history of our discipline, of a composite meeting of all three main traditional forums on Cultural Astronomy worldwide.

As a target of oportunity, we propose that the meeting takes place in coincidence with the Autumn Equinox. Both practical and scientific reasons prompt us to propose this date. Although for late September the university lectures have already started, it is still a period of reasonably good weather in Galicia, and the pressure of tourist is declining, so it is rather easier to accommodate all the people attending the conference than at any other epoch in the heat of the summer season. Besides, if the weather is good enough, we could witness the illumination effect that has recently been discovered in the Cathedral of Santiago by our research group. On the day of the equinox a sunbeam of the setting sun enters through the Romanesque window of the western façade, illuminating the image of Saint James in the main altar of the Cathedral.

Three outreach lectures devoted to the general public will be scheduled on the evening of Tuesday 19, Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21. These will be handled by first line scholars of the discipline (TBD).
A course on "Astronomy and World Heritage" is planned in parallel in collaboration with CC4.