Skyscape Academy Anniversary Conference
Online via Zoom | December 5th, 2026 | 2.00–6.00pm (UK time)
Early booking: £20 until 5 November 2026
Standard price: £25 from 6 November
Includes the live online conference and 12 months’ access to the recording.
How have people understood, experienced and lived with the sky?
Join the Skyscape Academy for an afternoon exploring the cultural significance of the sky—from the Step Pyramid of ancient Egypt and the stories through which knowledge travels, to the landscapes of Cranborne Chase and Indigenous understandings of celestial beings in South America.
Celebrating the Academy’s first year, the conference brings together Bernadette Brady, Danielle Alexander, Fabio Silva and Alejandro Martín López, followed by a keynote lecture from Professor Clive Ruggles: Sighting the Sun—and Moon?—at Stonehenge.
Together, the talks explore how archaeology, astronomy and cultural knowledge can deepen our understanding of people’s relationships with the sky—and challenge the assumptions we bring to the past.
Whether you have studied with the Academy, work in archaeology or cultural astronomy, or are simply curious about the connections between people, places and the sky, you are warmly invited.
We will close with a preview of the Academy’s courses, events and opportunities for 2027.
Join live or watch afterwards
Attend online via Zoom, wherever you are. Your booking includes the live conference and 12 months’ access to the conference recording, so you can catch up if you cannot attend or return to the talks afterwards.
Programme
Each 30-minute paper session includes time for questions and discussion. The keynote session also includes Q&A.
2.00pm — Opening
2.10pm — Cardinality and the Step Pyramid: The Sky Embedded in Stone
Bernadette Brady (University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Abstract The pyramid complex of Netjerikhet (Djoser) at Saqqara represents an amalgamation of architecture and astronomy. Egyptologists agree that its orientation is described in terms of cardinal alignment, yet such terminology risks imposing a modern geographical abstraction onto an ancient theological framework. This position leaves unexamined a more fundamental question: why were these directions significant in the first place? In the Third Dynasty Step Pyramid, the structure’s orientation was associated with concepts of permanence, renewal, and royal transformation, mirroring the movement of the stars and the sun. This lecture examines the theology that may underlie the astronomy of the cardinal points, as well as the sun’s role in the spatial logic, placement, and proportions of Netjerikhet’s Heb-Sed course, which is bisected by the east-west axis.
2.40pm — Tales as Old as Time: Storytelling in Archaeology
Danielle Alexander
Abstract Storytelling is often relegated to the realm of fiction and, as such, typically omitted from scientific investigation. Yet the act of weaving tales predates the historical record by many millennia: it was through stories that societies preserved their histories and knowledge. For much of the (western) pursuit of knowledge, stories were cast aside in the misguided belief that they were fictitious at best and a ‘disease of language’ at worst. That attitude is now shifting, and storytelling is increasingly recognised as holding valuable data for archaeological investigation, with the tales passed down through the generations serving as a compendium of cultural and cosmological knowledge. This talk asks why stories continue to hold such evocative power even in an age and culture that diminishes their importance, and highlights the ways in which they can be utilised within archaeology to enrich the data and deepen interpretations, whether this be during knowledge acquisition as effective exploratory tools, or during transmission as affective educational media — ensuring accessibility and engagement through the telling of tales, an act as old as time.
3.10pm — Cranborne Chase Skyscapes: Preliminary Findings from the Skyscape Academy Field School
Fabio Silva (The Skyscape Academy)
Abstract How might attending to the sky change our understanding of an archaeological landscape? In August 2026, participants in the Skyscape Academy’s Field School began exploring this question in Cranborne Chase. Drawing on the concepts and methods introduced during the school, students developed small research projects at sites that had not previously been investigated from a skyscape perspective. This talk presents the initial results of their research, considering relationships between monuments, their landscape settings and the sky. These investigations form the starting point for Cranborne Chase Skyscapes, a collaborative project exploring how people’s engagements with the sky were woven into the making and inhabiting of this landscape. By introducing both the student work and the project’s next steps, the talk considers how a field school can become a setting for sustained research, where learning methods and contributing new knowledge develop together.
3.40pm — What Do We Mean When We Talk About Planets? Contributions from South American Ethnoastronomy
Alejandro Martin Lopez (CONICET, UBA, Argentina)
Abstract Cultural astronomy seeks not to identify fragments of Western astronomy in other cultures, but to understand how societies relate to the sky on their own terms. The implications of this distinction become clear when examining the identification of “planets” among the peoples of the South American lowlands. Since European contact, chroniclers, missionaries and scholars have recorded indigenous names supposedly corresponding to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Mercury. But what assumptions underpin these identifications, and how accurately do they represent indigenous astronomical systems? Recent ethnoastronomical research, informed by local worldviews and cosmologies, challenges these interpretations. Fundamental questions arise: What constitutes an entity? How are celestial entities distinguished, and how are their movements understood and classified? Such questions suggest that “planet” may be an inappropriate category for these societies. This case illustrates why ethnoastronomy, archaeoastronomy and the history of astronomy must critically reconsider the conceptual categories they bring to other cultures.
4.10pm — Break
4.30pm — KEYNOTE: Sighting the Sun – and Moon? – at Stonehenge
Clive Ruggles (University of Leicester)
Abstract The connection between Stonehenge and summer solstice sunrise is well known, but over-speculation, by both astronomers and archaeologists, concerning its use for observations of the sky have led many to steer well clear of the subject. This keynote talk will describe what we can sensibly say about the relationship of Stonehenge to the sun, how this relates to more conventional archaeological evidence that has been uncovered in recent years, and what it might have meant to the people who built and used Stonehenge. But what about the moon? We have just passed a major lunar standstill, which occurs every 18.6 years when the moon can be seen at fortnightly intervals exceptionally far to the north and south. Was this – as some say – known to our prehistoric forebears and was it marked and celebrated, at Stonehenge and elsewhere?
5.45pm — Looking Ahead: The Skyscape Academy in 2027
A brief look at courses and events that the Skyscape Academy will run next year.
6.00pm — Close
