What is a lunar standstill III1?

Lionel Sims lionel.sims@btinternet.com University of East London

Abstract: Prehistoric monument alignments on lunar standstills

currently are understood for horizon range, perturbation event,
crossover event, eclipse prediction, solstice full Moon and the
solarisation of the dark Moon. The first five models are found to fail the
criteria of archaeoastronomy field methods. The final model of lunar-
solar conflation draws upon all the observed components of lunar
standstills – solarised reverse phased sidereal Moons culminating in
solstice dark Moons in a roughly nine year alternating cycle between
major and minor standstills. This lunar-solar conflation model is a
syncretic overlay upon an antecedent Palaeolithic template for lunar
scheduled rituals and amenable to transformation.

Keywords: Lunar standstill; synodic; sidereal; lunar-solar; syncretic.

Introduction

Thom’s publications between 1954 and 1975 galvanised a generation –

with horror among many archaeologists and inspiration for others, some
of whom began reconstructing the discipline of archaeoastronomy
(Ruggles 1999. 1-11, 275). However since the 1980’s an extended re-
evaluation of his work within archaeoastronomy has questioned many of
his claims that some monuments of prehistoric North-West Europe were
aligned on the Sun’s solstices and the Moon’s standstills (Ruggles 1999.
49-67). Nevertheless some leading archaeologists in Britain have begun
to embrace the evidence for prehistoric monuments’ ‘astronomical’
alignments (Thomas 1999; Parker Pearson 2012). To unravel what has
been lost and gained after half a century of scholarly endeavour we need
to re-examine the properties of prehistoric monument ‘astronomical’
alignments to trace their variable engagement by different researchers.
Solar and Lunar Alignments

A prehistoric monument alignment on the Sun and on the Moon is an

architectural arrangement of materials orientated on a horizon position
locating where either luminary rises or sets. At summer solstice the Sun
rises in the north-east and sets in the north-west. Six months later at
winter solstice the Sun rises in the south-east and sets in the south-west.
For any given time period, latitude and horizon altitude these horizon
positions are fixed. At the latitude of Stonehenge the azimuths of the
solstice Sun are about 40° above and below the west-east axis (Figure 1).
From three days before and after the solstice the unaided human eye
cannot detect the 2ʹ change from its solstice limit, and in seven days it
remains within 11ʹ of its solstice extreme (Ruggles 1999. 24-25). Each of
the four solstice rise and set events therefore lasts for at least one week
in prehistory. Outside of the two weeks of both solstices, for about 5½
months, the Sun’s horizon rise and set positions slowly begin to change
towards its greatest rate of daily horizon change during the equinoxes of
24? per day - three quarters of its 32? diameter. A monument’s single
solstice alignment therefore abstracts out just 1 horizon event repeating
for seven days out of a possible 1782 solar alignments. While a severe
selection of the Sun’s movements, nevertheless these horizon positions
do not contradict and may act as proxies for the seasonal changes
marked by the full suite of the Sun’s movements.

A monumental lunar alignment is a more complex matter and, in

important respects, quite different from a solar alignment. For while the
Moon also has horizon range limits just as does the Sun instead of being
fixed they vary over an 18.61 year cycle. Thom named this phenomenon
the lunar standstills which every 9.3 years alternate between major and
minor standstills (Thom 1971. 19, 124, 173). The range of the Moon’s
horizon rises and sets complete over the course of the 27.3 day sidereal
month – the time it takes to complete its circulation of the earth. During
a major standstill of the Moon at the latitude of Stonehenge the Moon
rise and sets about 10° of azimuth further north and south on the
horizon than the Sun ever reaches during its solstices. After a period of
over a year the Moon’s orbital plane about the earth begins to reduce
from 5° above the earth’s equatorial plane about the Sun to, 9.3 years
later, 5° beneath the equatorial plane. This minor standstill’s horizon
range limits are now about 10° within the Sun’s solstice positions at the
latitude of Stonehenge, and for over a year the Moon returns to these
‘same’ positions (Figure 1). The Moon therefore has eight horizon limits
unlike the Sun’s four.

Figure 1 Plan view of natural horizon alignments on Sun’s solstices and

Moon’s standstills at Stonehenge 2,500BC (bracketed numbers are
degrees of azimuth above or below the west-east axis).

Throughout its 18.61 year cycle the Moon rises and sets on intermediate
horizon positions between these changing horizon extremes of the
Moon. Only during the period of a lunar standstill, major or minor, does
the Moon return to the same small region of the horizon when it is at its
standstill range limit. It is therefore a selection of just one horizon
moment during one day or night out of about 27 days and nights during
two periods of the 18.61 year cycle. While like the Sun a lunar alignment
is therefore a selection from all possible horizon positions, unlike the Sun
it is not an observation repeated over the course of a week, but a one
moment time lapsed observation separated by periods of about 27 days
during either the major or the minor standstill about every nine years.
When the Moon returns each sidereal month to its horizon alignment it
does not repeat its earlier lunar phase. While it takes the Moon 27.3
days to circle the earth, during that time the earth is also moving around
the sun, and the three bodies re-align at the completion of the synodic
month in 29.5 days. Therefore a lunar alignment presents phase
sequences which are about 2.2 days earlier phases than the previous
lunar phase alignments. An alignment on a lunar standstill therefore
selects lunar phases in reverse sequence to when contrarily we view the
Moon’s phases over the course of a synodic month. Lastly, as the Moon
circulates the Earth which itself circulates the Sun the changing
gravitational interaction of all three bodies are reflected in small
differences in the position of the maximum range limits of either
standstill. Modern heliocentric positional astronomy has shown that at
different positions in its orbit of earth these perturbations exhibit a
regular sinusoidal alternation of the order of about 10' of arc (Thom
1971. 15-27; Sims 2006).

In summary, just like a solstice alignment a lunar standstill alignment is a

selection of a few horizon positions from its total rise or set positions,
but unlike the Sun this alignment is not a simple proxy for other
characteristics of the Moon. Instead of four solstice horizon positions
there are eight lunar standstill horizon range limits of the major and
minor standstills, its sidereal properties are cryptic not redundantly
obvious as are the solstices, they reverse its lunar phases, and at its
horizon limits exhibit small perturbations. It is in the variable
interpretation of these similarities and differences between solstices and
standstills that scholars in archaeoastronomy have marked out six
different approaches to lunar standstills. There is therefore no consensus
within archaeoastronomy for how to interpret lunar standstills and these
divisions require resolution (Sims 2013a).

To evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each of these six positions I

will refer to the archaeological details at the Stonehenge monument
complex since this is, arguably, one of the culminating achievements of a
wider cosmology extant throughout Neolithic Europe. This late Neolithic
and Early Bronze Age site has attracted close scholarly attention which
has amassed enough fine detail to allow designing discriminating tests
between the available interpretive models.

Lunar standstills as horizon range

According to Silva and Pimenta (2012. 206) the majority view within
archaeoastronomy is that lunar standstills were selected by prehistoric
monument builders for the Moon’s extended horizon range displayed
only during the major standstill of the moon. Throughout this period of
over a year every thirteen or so days the Moon reaches its northern and
southern limits at azimuths roughly 50° above and below the west-east
axis at the latitude of Stonehenge, which is about 10° beyond the Sun at
its solstice horizon positions (Figure 1). Between these periods the
Moon’s daily and nightly changes touch intermediate horizon positions
and pass through the range limits of the minor standstill which the Moon
reaches 9.3 years later. When the Moon is at its minor standstill its
azimuth is about 30° above and below the west-east line well within the
Sun’s azimuth at about 40°. Compared to the major standstill this
approach considers that since the Moon passes through this position for
much of the 18.61 year cycle, the minor standstill is both difficult to
observe and has little significance because of the narrower width of its
horizon range. Gauging the lunar standstills against the Sun’s horizon
range is therefore a solarist attribution that the Moon at a major
standstill is a ‘superior sun’ by virtue of wide horizon range alone.
Authors who adopt this view emphasise the period of 18.61 years as the
time span of lunar standstills.
However González-García (2016) has shown that it is not difficult to
observe the minor standstill of the Moon. During this period the Moon’s
horizon range is at its narrowest while the number or rises and sets
remain the same at just over 27 events each sidereal month. This
produces a proportionally increased bunching of maximum horizon
events which is greater than the maximum horizon range bunching for
both the Moon’s major standstill and the Sun’s solstices. Further if the
solarist understanding of the prehistoric appropriation of lunar
standstills is correct, then it would predict that no monuments in
prehistory would have alignments on the minor standstill of the Moon
beyond those of chance. This is incorrect. Ruggles (1999. 74-6, 95) has
shown that Scottish recumbent and West Scotland rows have statistically
significant alignments on both the southern major and minor standstills
as has Burl (1981) for the Clava Cairns. Furthermore along the West
Kennet Avenue at Avebury Sims (2015) has shown that across paired
stones 1-37, out of 362 possible alignments, 145 solar and lunar
alignments can be found. Using Bernoulli’s Law, so accounting for
possible overstatement from straight sections along the avenue with a
regular horizon, Sims shows that this is a possible chance occurrence for
3.3 in every million times. Within these 145 alignments 21 are on
solstices, 31 on major standstills and 48 are on minor standstills. The
rejection of minor standstills as chance alignments therefore does not
meet the requirements expected in archaeoastronomy field methods.
Emphasizing the Moon’s extended horizon range during the major
standstill is more an extemporary field method device to distinguish a
monument’s possible orientation on the Sun. But in its rejection of the
minor standstill of the Moon this approach has failed to lay the basis for
investigating what properties it may share with the major standstill.

Major and minor standstills as separate phenomenon

The second type of archaeoastronomy theory considers the minor

standstill of the Moon as requiring special explanation separate to that
of the major standstill which is understood to be defined by its wide
horizon range. There are currently two versions of this approach –
North’s (1996) alternating perturbations and Silva’s and Pimenta’s (2012)
crossover model.

Figure 2 The lower and upper gaps through the central axial stones at
Stonehenge as seen from the left and right hand sides of the Heel Stone
(North 1996. 446). (Numbering follows the accepted notation for each
stone.)

North showed that while in plan view Stonehenge is gaps surrounding an

empty space, paradoxically in elevation view it is an ‘obscuration’ device
of a seemingly near-solid mass of stone when approaching it from the
north-east uphill along the Avenue and past the Heel Stone. Standing by
the Heel Stone two windows can be seen one above the other framed by
the Grand Trilithon and the outer-circle lintels (Figure 2). From the right
hand side of the Heel Stone the lower window frames the setting winter
solstice sunsets and from the left hand side of the Heel Stone at an
altitude of about 4-5° the upper window captures the setting southern
minor standstill moonsets. North considered these two alignments
separately and suggested that the southern minor standstill moonset
perturbations would have been seen in this upper window smoothly
zigzagging left and right four or so times over the course of a minor
standstill year. North suggested that since the Sun does not do this when
at its solstice horizon range limit, then the people of Stonehenge would
have considered this property of the southern minor standstill magical
and worthy for their monument (North 1996. 441-474, Sims 2006).

It is not clear that the Moon’s perturbations will be observed at

Stonehenge as the architecture of the monument does not assist such
high fidelity observations. The distance from the Heel Stone to the Grand
Trilithon is about 88 metres which is not enough to provide the
resolution to discern the movements of a few minutes of arc of any
(obscured) edge of the lunar disc. From the Heel Stone the height of the
upper window would have subtended an angle of about 10' and a width
over one degree. Since the lunar disc is about 31' in diameter this upper
window would have framed just a descending sliver of the Moon in its 1-
2° of oscillating azimuths at its standstill horizon range limits (see below).
That is assuming the perturbations could be seen distinct from other
movements of the Moon. As the Moon is constantly changing its
declination3, and since the moment of the geocentric declination
extreme is generally independent of the moment when the Moon meets
the horizon, by the time the Moon is on any horizon the Moon’s
declination is at a different value from its perturbation limit. There will
therefore be no regular zigzag horizon movement of the Moon at its
minor standstill limit but irregular movements. This can be seen in Figure
3 which contrasts the smooth sinusoidal perturbations of the Moon
when orbiting the Earth with how these become irregular oscillations by
the time the Moon sets on the horizon (See also Sims 2007).
Figure 3 Contrast between the Geocentric Extreme Declination of the Moon (GED) 2491-2488 BC and
Azimuth (Az) of southern minor standstill Moon setting in the Upper Window at Stonehenge.

-17

-18

-19
Degress Dec & Trans. Azim

GED
-20
Az

-21

-22

-23
Dates 2491BC-2489BC

Note: Azimuth values have been transformed to fit the declination scale and should be examined for
shape, not values, alone.
Finally, every standstill at its horizon limit, whether major or minor,
north or south, rises or sets, exhibits similar (irregular) perturbations to
that of the southern minor standstill moonsets, so either all of these are
equally ‘magical’ or none of them are. North defines the southern minor
standstill by the boundary oscillations of the lunar horizon range limits,
and the major standstill by its greater horizon range than that of the sun,
without interrogating theshared properties of both. This model also
therefore emphasises the period of 18.61 years between major
standstills and misinterprets minor standstills.

Silva’s and Pimenta’s winter solstice lunar crescent crossover model, the
second within this group, offers an alternative explanation to that of
alignments on the minor standstill of the Moon. They demonstrate that
during summer and autumn the first crescent Moon always sets to the
left of the Sun’s horizon setting, but within a period of 150 days over
winter the Moon switches and sets to the right of the Sun’s setting
position. The pattern of alignments for this crossover event is a non-
Guassian distribution with a marked modal frequency which coincides
with that of the southern minor standstill of the moon. Any monument
with an alignment on the minor standstill would, the authors suggest, be
better explained by this annual event. According to the authors the
preferred function for the crossover event would have been to mark
annual calendrical calculations, while the major standstill of the Moon is
best explained by its wide horizon range (Silva and Pimenta 2012.
202,206).

While the authors claim that the Sun crosses over the first crescent
Moon at the winter solstice, during the 2014/5 minor standstill of the
Moon the actual date of the crossover was the 12th December, not the
solstice of 21st December. Not just the time but the horizon position of
the crossover event is also highly variable. While the azimuth band for
the range limit of the minor standstill is only about 1-2° (see below), that
of the first crescent winter crossover horizon event is spread over an
azimuth range of about 26° - a qualitatively higher order of magnitude
than that of all lunar standstills. The Stonehenge axial upper window
which captures all the southern minor standstill moonsets would not be
able to capture about 89% of these crossovers.

It remains to be explained why the non-Gaussian distribution of the first

lunar crescent crossover with the Sun has a peak which coincides with
the southern minor standstill horizon moonsets. A crossover event is an
amalgam of the properties of two variables – the movements of the Sun
and those of the Moon. To disentangle conjoint influences we need to
elaborate their separate effects. Consider first when the Moon is at the
southern minor standstill. For this year and adjacent years the Moon’s
horizon range does not move much further south than when within 10°
of azimuth or so of the Sun’s horizon range. Only when the Sun starts to
leave its winter solstice declination and begins to set further north on
the horizon does it approach close enough to the Moon for a crossover
to occur. Therefore while the event will coincide or be close with the
southern minor standstill declination it cannot take place at the winter
solstice. Since Stonehenge has a lower window aligned on winter solstice
sunset the crossover model cannot explain the monument’s conflation of
the Moon and the Sun. Now consider when the Moon is at the major
standstill. The Moon then sets much further south on the horizon than
the Sun ever reaches, but the Moon’s horizon movements from south to
north take 13/14 days while those of the Sun take 6 months. The Moon’s
movements will now allow the crossover event to take place when the
Sun is still at or close to its winter solstice horizon position, but not at the
horizon position of the southern minor standstill. Therefore this event
will coincide with a winter solstice declination but it cannot take place
when the Moon is at the southern minor standstill declination. We now
turn to the Moon’s movements when either expanding or contracting its
horizon range and can crossover with the Sun. During this inter-standstill
period, when the Sun has moved to the horizon position of the southern
minor standstill about 6 weeks after the winter solstice, the Moon will
crossover the Sun once it has left its southern horizon limit. In both cases
the Sun is not the winter solstice Sun and neither is the Moon the
southern minor moon. In aggregate these separate effects create the
non-Gaussian distribution with a peak that coincides with the southern
minor standstill yet it will only rarely take place at winter solstice, most
frequently it will take place when the Moon is not at the southern minor
standstill and it will never take place during the southern minor standstill
at winter solstice. Therefore a monument aligned on the minor standstill
of the Moon and the winter solstice Sun cannot be explained by the
crossover model.

The shared properties of Major and Minor lunar standstills

The third group of theories for lunar standstills identifies shared

properties between the major and the minor standstills and there are
presently three different theories with this approach.

Thom (1971. 15) suggested that monuments aligned on both types of

standstills were devices to predict lunar eclipses. In both cases eclipses
occur when the Moon’s perturbations coincide and add to the horizon
range limits of lunar standstills every 9.3 years. Since the maximum
perturbation only very rarely occurs when the Moon is on the horizon,
Thom suggested that ‘extrapolation devices’ were necessary to
extrapolate the precise moment of the maximum. There is however no
evidence for such devices and it would not be possible to track these tiny
horizon movements with low resolution alignments (Ruggles 1999. 63).
Nevertheless, as during a lunar standstill these maximum perturbations
always occur close to the equinoxes, and as NW European late
Neolithic/EBA prehistoric monuments which conflate the Moon with the
Sun choose the solstice Sun and not its equinoxes (Ruggles 1999. 148-
151), the monument builders appear to be avoiding not predicting an
eclipsed moon. Since an eclipsed Moon is an interrupted full Moon, it
seems that the monument builders were selecting for some aspect of an
uninterrupted cycle of lunar phases at their ritual centres.
The remaining two models of lunar standstills current within
archaeoastronomy engage with the intrinsic properties of the Moon’s
phases rather than just their horizon location. Ruggles suggests that the
monument builders entrained their monuments on lunar standstill full
Moons. Ruggles’ critique of Thom’s work was based on a major field
work exercise of five regional groups of monuments in the British Isles.
From the data emerged a strong preference for lunar alignments on the
southern lunar standstills, both major and minor, and particularly onto
settings rather than risings. Ruggles concluded that along these
alignments they would have observed the full Moon setting (Ruggles
1999. 75, 96-98, 107, 128, 130, 138-9, 149, 154). But for the Moon to be
full when it is at its southern extreme range, whether at the major or the
minor standstill, the Sun has to be at its northern extreme – namely at
summer solstice. Since all of these monument groups also included
alignments on the winter solstice sunsets, not summer solstice, and since
they paired the southern standstill moons with the winter solstice, this
skyscape archaeology provides no justification for conflating the
southern standstill Moon as full Moon with the summer solstice. Further
the Sun would not be simultaneously setting in the lower window but
rising on the north-east horizon. Both the astronomy of a single point
estimate for a lunar standstill and the skyscape archaeology of
Stonehenge do not support selecting summer solstice full Moon as the
way to interpret the southern minor standstill at Stonehenge (See also
Heggie 1981. 98).

The final sixth model of lunar standstills addresses the emergent

properties from their combination with the Sun’s solstices. Sarsen
Stonehenge is a binary monument with two circles and two horseshoes.
With the half height, half width and half depth stone 11 it has 29½
stones in the outer sarsen circle and 19 stones in the bluestone
horseshoe, both lunar numbers. The building’s design principle of
obscuration by nested lintelled and ranked wide pillars allows bringing
onto one alignment from the Heel Stone a lower window opening onto
the setting winter solstice Sun and above it in another window upon the
southern minor standstill moonsets (North 1996; Sims 2006 and 2016).
In short the precise archaeology of sarsen Stonehenge defines what
‘astronomy’ is being selected for through the cropping of the lunar and
solar discs by these two windows.

Figure 4 Southern Minor Standstill 2510-2507 BC at latitude of

Stonehenge

Note

1. Vertical axis in degrees of topocentric declination.

2. Horizontal axis is number of each southern lunar extreme
between 2510 and 2507 BC. The topocentric extreme declination
occurred on 12th April 2508BC at declination -19.25°.
3. Dark Moon during week of winter solstice (in red) on 10th
January 2507BC at declination -20.115°.
4. Declination values for all moonsets at 4pm, the approximate time
the winter solstice Sun sets in the Stonehenge lower window.
5. Source: SkyMap Vers. 8.
Both Ruggles (1999) and North (1996) define a lunar standstill by a single
point for its geocentric extreme and respectively use this value to justify
their suggestions that the builders either selected full Moon at summer
solstice or alternating perturbations during the minor standstill. To
evaluate the details of these positions consider in Figure 4 the southern
minor standstill of the Moon at the latitude of Stonehenge for the thirty
months from 9th November4 2510 to 30th April 2507 BC - the minor
standstill immediately before the probable date for the building of
sarsen Stonehenge around 2,500 BC (Parker-Pearson 2012).

The extreme range is reached on 12th April 2508 BC at a declination of -

19.25° when the Moon is at waning quarter Moon. Full Moon is met
three sidereal months later, during the summer solstice week of the 3rd
July5 2508 BC at a declination of -19.59°. Since one degree of declination
translates into about two degrees of azimuth at this latitude, ignoring
any refraction effects this summer solstice full Moon is about 41ʹ of
azimuth less than the extreme point of the standstill. A descending sliver
of this Moon would still be seen in the Stonehenge upper window with
its declination limits as shown in Figure 4, but to the left by over one
lunar diameter and not at the actual extreme value used to define the
lunar standstill. This value cannot justify the choice of either full Moon or
alternating perturbations as suggested by these two authors. Further
during full Moon the Sun would not be simultaneously setting in the
lower window but rising on the north-east horizon. Both the astronomy
of a single point estimate for a lunar standstill and the skyscape
archaeology of Stonehenge do not support selecting summer solstice full
Moon as the way to interpret the southern minor standstill at
Stonehenge (See also Heggie 1981. 98).

Over a period of about 36 months the southern extreme horizon

moonsets of the minor standstill of the Moon irregularly alternate
between a declination of about -19° and -20° (Figure 4). Unlike the sun’s
solstice horizon position, a lunar standstill extreme limit is not a point
but a small region on the horizon which displays a vacillating reverse
sequence of 36 or so lunar phases. These phases of the Moon include all
phases that can be witnessed during the transiting synodic Moon but in
reverse. Selecting any one of these phases to define a lunar standstill
cannot be justified by a single declination value. The archaeology at
Stonehenge, and at the five regional sites reported by Ruggles, is clear -
all of these 36 or so reversed lunar phases descend through the upper
window at Stonehenge. This includes the dark Moon of -20.115° during
the week of winter solstice on 10th January 2507 BC ten sidereal months
after the extreme declination of the Moon (Figure 4). But the monument
builders conflated this sequence in the upper window with the week of
winter solstice sunsets in the lower window. By the binary architecture
of the monument this arrangement selects the entire reverse phased
sequence of lunations which culminate with the binary astronomy of
dark Moon at winter solstice. Since the subsequent Moons on this
alignment are reversed waning crescent Moons, and as these are only
visible when rising a few hours before sunrise and not at their setting,
then for three or so months from the winter solstice no Moon will be
seen setting in the Stonehenge upper window. It seems that the
monument builders required for their rituals to coincide with the start of
the longest darkest night.

It may be thought that when dark moon coincides with the sun’s
solstices outside the periods of lunar standstills that this invalidates
selecting this conjunction for standstills alone. For example dark Moons
occurred during this millennium’s winter solstice week in 2003, 2011 and
will do so in 2017 - none of which are standstill years. However the issue
is that none of these occurrences outside of the 2014-6 period of the
lunar standstill could be identified by a stable alignment spread of a few
degrees over the course of 36 months. The moon’s horizon range limits
occupy two very small and stable parts of the horizon only at these
periods of the major and minor standstills. This is not possible during
inter-standstill years where the range limits are changing substantially. In
Figure 5 can be seen that over the three years of the inter-standstill
Figure 5 Southern lunar extremes at latitude of Stonehenge
during the inter-standstill years 2505-2503 BC. (Source: SkyMap vers. 8)

-20
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
-22
-24
-26
-28
-30
-32
-34
-36
-38
-40

Note

1. Vertical axis in degrees of topocentric declination.

2. Horizontal axis is number of each southern lunar extreme
between 2505 and 2503 BC.
3. Declination values for all moonsets at 4pm, the approximate time
the winter solstice Sun sets in the Stonehenge lower window.
4. Source: SkyMap Vers. 8.
5. Another possible challenge concerns the claim for the meshing of
lunar phases exactly conflating dark Moon with the solstices
between each standstill. Since the standstill cycle recurs every
18.61 years, and as this is an irregular number, repeating
standstill dark Moons will not always coincide with the solstices
close to the central extreme declination value of the following or
preceding standstill.
years of 2505-2503 BC the southern lunar extremes range from -22.4° to
-27.5° declination. This difference of 5.1° declination equals 10.2° of
horizon azimuth and could not be accommodated within the Stonehenge
architecture. Only during the period of a lunar standstill could an
alignment with a range of two degrees accommodate a horizon reversed
suite of lunar phases culminating in dark moon at winter solstice and so
be enshrined into the axial centre of the monuments. Such was the case
for the minor standstill period of 2014-6 when dark Moons also occurred
during winter solstice week on the 22nd December 2014, when the Sun
was setting in the Stonehenge lower window.

The peaks and troughs in the Moon’s horizon movements will therefore
migrate serpent-like through each standstill and this would seem to
invalidate the model’s claim that dark moons will always coincide with
solstice weeks during lunar standstills. This misunderstanding of the
model is a consequence of defining lunar standstills by the 18.61 year
cycle of modern celestial mechanics whereas prehistoric sky watchers
understood it by horizon azimuth. However it should be remembered
that the archaeology of Stonehenge, and the five regional groups studied
by Ruggles, specify the combined selection of winter solstice sunsets and
the southern (major and minor – see below) lunar standstill sunsets. The
association of these two alignments migrates through a 36 month period
of each standstill, sometimes occurring before the extreme declination
and at other standstills after that extreme. Table 1 shows the six minor
standstills that occurred during the century before the presently
understood building date of Stonehenge. At the latitude of Stonehenge,
in these cases over a maximum period of twenty months, the moment of
the extreme declination of the Moon varies over the course of the one
month of April, while dark Moon coinciding with winter solstice also
varies over the course of the third millennium BC but by either four
months before the extreme or ten months after it. In short, within a
small alignment horizon band of about 1½° (0.7196 x 2) over the course
of one year in the three years of these minor standstills 13 reversed
phased sidereal Moons culminate in dark Moon at winter solstice for all
six minor standstills.

Table 1 Relationship between dark Moon during week of winter solstice

and the topocentric extreme of the southern minor standstills at latitude
of Stonehenge for 2602-2508 BC. (Source: SkyMap vers. 8)
Year BC Moon’s Moon’s Winter Winter Deviation Deviation of
topocentric topocentric solstice solstice dark in sidereal winter dark
extreme extreme dark Moon months of Moon from
date declination° Moon declination° dark Moon topocentric
date from top. extreme in
Extreme degrees
declination°

2602 30 April -19.633 10 -20.0101 -4 0.3768

January

2583 2 April -19.517 10 -19.808 -3 0.3713

January

2564 28 April -19.241 9 January -19.727 -4 0.4853

2546 11 April -19.367 10 Jan -19.819 +10 0.4519

2545

2527 11 April -19.233 10 Jan -19.953 +10 0.7196

2526

2508 12 April -19.583 10 Jan -20.116 +10 0.5325

2507

Northern lunar standstills

Our critique through the details of sarsen Stonehenge of the first five
archaeoastronomy models of lunar standstills has concentrated on the
minor standstill of the Moon at its southern moonsets. Identical
structure is revealed in the northern extreme moonsets of the minor
Figure 66 Monthly geocentric extreme declinations of the 1969 major
standstill and the 1978 minor standstill, by date and lunar phase
(Morrison 1980).
standstill and in the southern and northern major lunar standstills. Figure
6 shows the northern and southern minor standstill for 1978 AD and
similarly for the major standstill of 1969 AD. It should be remembered
that these smooth sinusoidal plots represent the points of the geocentric
extremes of the Moon during its orbit round the Earth, but that once
reaching the horizon the Moon’s declination will have changed and a
more erratic fluctuation will be observed (See Figures 3 and 4). The
remaining pattern and properties shown in Figure 6 are general for all
lunar standstills (See Thom 1971. 20; 1978, 11-16; North 1996. 553-572).
Just as we found that the extreme declination value for the southern
minor standstills occurred at first or third quarter Moons around the
time of the equinoxes, this remains the case for northern minor
standstills and major standstills at both northern and southern extremes.
For the twenty or so sidereal lunations shown here in each lunar
standstill, they all occur within a very narrow band of about 30? of
declination and all present a reverse sequence of lunar phases every 27
or so days spread over the course of 1½ years. The remaining structural
feature of dark Moon synchrony with the Sun’s solstice that we have
found for the southern minor lunar standstills also belongs to the
northern minor standstills and both the southern and northern major
lunar standstills. Thus while during the southern major standstill dark
Moon happens during the week of winter solstice just as it did for the
southern minor standstill, now for the northern lunar standstills,
whether minor or major, dark Moon occurs during the week of summer
solstice. For the minor standstill period of 2014-6 AD dark Moons
occurred not just during winter solstice week on the 22nd December
2014 but also for the summer solstice week of 17th June 2015. This
synchronisation will always occur within a period of about 36 months
around the extreme horizon moonsets of each lunar standstill of the
Moon. Because of this fluctuating synchronisation of solstice and dark
Moon during each minor and major standstill, the alternation between
them is about nine years and the 18.61 year nodal cycle length is an
understanding from modern heliocentric positional astronomy and not
relevant to a prehistoric flat-earth geocentric cosmology .

Interpreting the model of dark Moon lunar-solar conflation

This understanding of lunar standstills as conflating the Sun’s solstices

with dark Moon seems counter-intuitive for observational astronomy –
‘...this makes no sense...[when] the Moon is new, and hence
invisible...’(Ruggles 1999. 247). It was probably for this reason that
Ruggles characterised his own field data which largely conflate solstice
and standstill alignments to the south west as ‘anomalous’ (Ruggles
1999. 142, 158). But as long as his findings are data, then it is only the
interpretation of full Moon that can be anomalous. Instead of making an
a priori assumption that the monument builders required a full Moon we
need to ask the question of what properties are revealed by solarising
the Moon’ alignment? Sims’ model of lunar-solar conflation argues that a
monument’s combined alignment on the Moon and the solstice Sun
selects sidereal properties that reverses lunar phases, attenuates a full
suite of lunar phases in a time-lapsed observation exercise spread over
the course of a year, and culminates at winter and summer solstices with
dark Moon at southern and northern lunar standstills respectively every
nine or so years. In short this model embraces all of the observed
characteristics of lunar standstills as a horizon alignment. We would
expect these themes of solarisation, reversal, attenuation and
alternating dark Moons over a nine-yearly cycle to inform an interpretive
theory of lunar standstills.

The suite of properties which has survived our critique exponentially

reduces the number of possible interpretations. Any theoretical model
which prioritises full Moon, annual calendars or eclipse prediction is not
supported by our findings. This complex portfolio of characteristics
suggests symbolic aspects of ritual embedded within signalling the large
labour investments required by monumental architecture. If this
interpretation is correct then we would expect similar themes of
alternation, reversal and calibration or re-calibration of the lunar and
solar cycles to be predicted by an appropriate theoretical model.

Three considerations suggest we should look at this suite of

characteristics as the property of a syncretic ritual - an overlay upon a
previous system of ritual: the formal properties of lunar-solar
alignments, the prehistoric archaeology and the anthropology of the
prehistoric socio-political systems that built the monuments. Since
reversal is built into the properties of a solarised lunar alignment this is
formally consistent with the way in which syncretic systems build
reversed structures onto those which preceded them and which they are
designed to displace, confiscate and annul. It is also consistent with the
continuity paradigm that Neolithic cosmologies derived from their
antecedent Mesolithic and Palaeolithic forager ancestors (Silva and
Franks 2013). And it is anthropologically sensitive to the monument
builder’s culture. They were Neolithic cattle herders who, while
continuing to hunt and forage, had split with their
Mesolithic/Palaeolithic solely hunter-gatherer origins (Stevens and Fuller
2012). Since hunters earn a wife through a life-time’s bride-service and
cattle owners purchase a wife through bride-price payments, this
transition is fraught with dislodging matrilineal rights in the interests of
an emerging patrilineal culture which prioritises the accumulation of
cattle wealth (Sims 2013b). If we pare away the surface overlay that
constitutes this solarised lunar syncretism, this formal exercise requires
us to reverse the reversed lunar phases of lunar standstills while
preserving the themes of alternating dark Moons. The result is to
radically simplify the root template out of which lunar-solar conflation
can emerge. Instead of reversed-phased Moons we would then have
synodic lunar phases prioritising dark Moon rituals and instead of lunar-
solar attenuated timescales we have monthly alternation every 29/30
days – in short the transiting Moon as seen in the sky by any observer
without the intermediary of a monument alignment. We are left with a
ritual system synchronised with lunar phases which culminate with dark
Moon. As a formal operation, as Palaeolithic continuity and as gender
reversal we arrive at a lunar transformational template.

Lunar-phased ritual system considered as a transformational template

Our interpretation of solarised lunar standstills as syncretic cosmological

systems derives from a prior condition of Palaeolithic gender equality
with (synodic) lunar scheduled rituals. This predicts an initial situation
cultural origins model of lunar- scheduled ritual syntax which entails,
consequent upon later socio-economic changes, later Neolithic lunar-
solar monument alignments. This lunar template suggests that those
who monopolise ritual power do so through a dark Moon performative
achievement. While we have derived this model through the
archaeoastronomy of solarised lunar monumental alignments, it
converges with the predictions of sex strike theory (Knight 1991) that, in
conditions of abundant mega-fauna, monthly dark Moon menstrual
seclusion rituals of matrilineal siblings were used by Palaeolithic women
to motivate prospective ‘husbands’ from other clans for hunting services.
Limiting ourselves in this paper to the archaeoastronomy implications
alone, while the model predicts that the ritual syntax of dark Moon is
invariant, it also predicts that changing relations of power and economic
shifts provide the motivation to transform this lunar template. For
example, matrilineal sibling coalitions relying on monthly big game hunt
provision will become vulnerable during the mega-fauna extinctions that
took place in Palaeolithic Europe between the Aurignacian and the
Magdalenian (Surovell 2008). Once such resource stress sets in then
according to regional circumstance the model predicts a number of
alternative routes for the ritual appropriation of ‘astronomy’. We have
found monumental solarised sidereal lunar alignments at Stonehenge
which reverse the synodic Moon while preserving a dark Moon
culmination. Ruggles provides the same data for five other regional
groups of monuments in prehistoric British Isles and North showed it for
the Avebury monument complex 20 miles north of Stonehenge. Exactly
the same ‘astronomy’ is found in the ancestral Hopi ‘Sun Dagger’ site at
Fajuda Butte (Soeffer 2012; Sims 2016). It also allows a solar or stellar
cosmology to overlay, or replace and annul an earlier lunar cosmology.
Evidence for an earlier version of this transformation can be seen
amongst one group of Magdalenien hunter-gatherers in the Praileaitz I
cave in the Basque country with a solarised and modularised synodic
lunar transformation (Sims and Otero, in press). For any solar cosmology
we would expect it to carry contrary evidence of an earlier lunar origin
exhibiting formal attributes according to lunar laws of motion. For
example, it suggests that later versions might include cosmologies
appropriating heliacal risings and settings as lunar equivalents of waning
and waxing crescent Moons spanning the period of dark Moon, or using
the phases of Venus as lunar equivalents as do the Ona hunter gatherers
of Tierra del Fuego (Bridges 1988). This critique of lunar standstills
reveals the prospect of a lunar transformational template being the
source of a ‘periodic table’ of ‘astronomies’ used by the world’s cultures
throughout history to buttress ritual systems experiencing varying
degrees of stress and emerging social complexity. Rather than
archaeoastronomy becoming a field discipline for ‘alignment studies’
eschewing interpretation (Ruggles 2011) or as a fringe discipline (Hutton
2013), it opens up an alternative robust and scholarly future as cultural
astronomy allied to and embedded within archaeology and
anthropology.

Conclusion

The ‘Thom paradigm’ (Aveni 1988) found solstice and standstill

alignments in many prehistoric monuments of NW Europe, and claimed
that this was in the service of eclipse prediction. After fifty years of
research eclipse prediction has not been accepted within
archaeoastronomy but the remaining evidence of solar and lunar
alignments remain and still require interpretation. In this paper we have
rejected all bar one model remaining within archaeoastronomy for this
evidence. Horizon range, crossover, perturbation and full Moon fail the
tests internal to the discipline to explain the properties of prehistoric
monument alignments on the Moon. Our critique instead suggests that a
model of lunar-solar conflation points to a ritual syntax centred on dark
Moon rituals is amenable to multiple transformations consequent upon
shifts in socio-political power. If this model of a lunar transformational
template withstands refutation then these examples open the prospect
for archaeoastronomy to find a ‘periodic table’ of alignments that will
map onto the world’s cosmologies and religions. It predicts that
archaeoastronomy has a central and essential role to play into future
research into the cosmologies of the world’s cultures.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Fabio Silva, Thomas Gough, Kim Malville, César
González-García and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments
on earlier versions of this paper.

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1
The first version was my 2007 paper for the 2006 SEAC conference in Rhodes and the second was an unpublished paper
for the 2014 SEAC conference in Malta. This latest third paper is an elaborated version of the second paper. It should be
read alongside the Forum debate ‘What is the minor standstill of the Moon?’ in Skyscape Archaeology 2.1, 67-102.
2
Subtracting the 14 days of the two solstice weeks from 365 days (=351), dividing by two for the outgoing and
returning Sun overlapping on the same alignment (=175.5), and then adding 2 for the two solstice events, each
of one week (=178).
3
This is the measure used in modern heliocentric positional astronomy, and is the number of degrees above or below the
celestial equator. In the geocentric flat earth cosmology of prehistory a concept of declination would have carried no
meaning. Instead some concepts equivalent to our ‘azimuth’ and ‘altitude’ would have been used.
4
All dates are Julian dates.
5
Summer and winter solstices were on 3rd July and 9th January respectively around 2600 BC and 2nd July and
8th January respectively around 2500 BC.
6
Five considerations need to be kept in mind when interpreting this computer generated model of lunar standstills: (a)
The vertical axis is cropped, so abutting the northern and southern horizon extremes when they are actually widely
separated on the western and eastern horizons by about 60° for minor standstills and about 100° for major standstills at
the latitude of Stonehenge. (b) The diameter of the lunar orb is not to scale and has been reduced to 5′ from its actual 30′
to better display its 20′ perturbations. (c) The Moon’s path is measured by its geocentric declination, which is a modern
measure from heliocentric positional astronomy of the distance in degrees from the celestial equator to the centre of the
lunar disc. Prehistoric horizon flat-earth ‘astronomy’ measures by azimuth and horizon altitude to the upper or lower limb
of the Sun and the Moon. At the latitude of Stonehenge 1° of declination translates as about 2° of azimuth for a given
horizon. (d) The Moon’s geocentric extreme declination occurs at any time in its transit around the earth and only very
rarely when it is breaking the horizon. As the Moon is always changing its declination the regular sinusoidal variation in
perturbation displayed in this figure is not observable on the horizon. (e) The regular sinusoidal oscillation of the Moon’s
perturbations shown in these images cannot be observed on the horizon, since the geocentric extremes mainly occur at
different points in the Moon’s circuit around the earth, and the Moon’s declination has changed by the time it rises or sets
on the horizon (Sims 2007, Fisher 2012).