11
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Boutsikas et al. (eds.), Advancing Cultural Astronomy, Historical & Cultural
Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_2
What Equinox?
Juan Antonio Belmonte
1 Introduction: Whose Equinox?
… it would probably be helpful if the word ‘equinox’ were simply eliminated from archaeoastronomers’ vocabulary … (Clive Ruggles 1997)
It is an honour and a pleasure to be part of this volume. I first met Clive Ruggles in
September 1996 during the SEAC Conference in Salamanca, although I already had
several references about his extraordinary work and skills through common friends
and had read several of his papers. For a rookie archaeoastronomer as I was then,
this was like a fan meeting his favourite rock-star. I could not imagine this would be
the beginning of a long lasting collaborative effort and, far more important, camaraderie and friendship. Since then, we have always been in close contact. I would like
to emphasize two aspects. The first one was the chance to work at his orders during
the edition of the Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (Ruggles,
2015). The second one has been the efforts to promote the IAU and UNESCO
‘Astronomy and World Heritage’ initiative (Ruggles, 2017; Ruggles & Cotte, 2010),
culminating in the process to declare the interior of the island of Gran Canaria as a
World Heritage Cultural Landscape (Belmonte et al., 2018); a process where Clive
had put all his skills and knowledge, despite his harmful personal situation. This is
a fact that greatly honoured him. Finally, we—a huge multidisciplinary team—were
successful in July 2019.
Back to 1996, we had just published our first part of the paper on ‘equinoctial
markers’ in Gran Canaria (Esteban, Belmonte, Schlueter, & González, 1996) and
were shocked by a preprint where the whole meaning, and even existence, of the equinox within a cultural astronomy study was questioned. The situation was so problematic that Clive thought it would be adequate and indeed useful to ask himself: ‘Whose
J. A. Belmonte (*)
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
e-mail: jba@iac.es
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Boutsikas et al. (eds.), Advancing Cultural Astronomy, Historical & Cultural
Astronomy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64606-6_2
What Equinox?
Juan Antonio Belmonte
1 Introduction: Whose Equinox?
… it would probably be helpful if the word ‘equinox’ were simply eliminated from archaeoastronomers’ vocabulary … (Clive Ruggles 1997)
It is an honour and a pleasure to be part of this volume. I first met Clive Ruggles in
September 1996 during the SEAC Conference in Salamanca, although I already had
several references about his extraordinary work and skills through common friends
and had read several of his papers. For a rookie archaeoastronomer as I was then,
this was like a fan meeting his favourite rock-star. I could not imagine this would be
the beginning of a long lasting collaborative effort and, far more important, camaraderie and friendship. Since then, we have always been in close contact. I would like
to emphasize two aspects. The first one was the chance to work at his orders during
the edition of the Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (Ruggles,
2015). The second one has been the efforts to promote the IAU and UNESCO
‘Astronomy and World Heritage’ initiative (Ruggles, 2017; Ruggles & Cotte, 2010),
culminating in the process to declare the interior of the island of Gran Canaria as a
World Heritage Cultural Landscape (Belmonte et al., 2018); a process where Clive
had put all his skills and knowledge, despite his harmful personal situation. This is
a fact that greatly honoured him. Finally, we—a huge multidisciplinary team—were
successful in July 2019.
Back to 1996, we had just published our first part of the paper on ‘equinoctial
markers’ in Gran Canaria (Esteban, Belmonte, Schlueter, & González, 1996) and
were shocked by a preprint where the whole meaning, and even existence, of the equinox within a cultural astronomy study was questioned. The situation was so problematic that Clive thought it would be adequate and indeed useful to ask himself: ‘Whose
J. A. Belmonte (*)
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
e-mail: jba@iac.es