By Jarita C. Holbrook (auth.), Jarita C. Holbrook, Johnson O. Urama, R. Thebe Medupe (eds.)
Astronomy is the technological know-how of learning the sky utilizing telescopes and light-weight creditors corresponding to photographic plates or CCD detectors. notwithstanding, humans have continually studied the sky and proceed to review the sky with out the help of tools this is often the area of cultural astronomy. this can be the 1st scholarly selection of articles taken with the cultural astronomy of Africans. It weaves jointly astronomy, anthropology, and Africa. the quantity contains African myths and legends in regards to the sky, alignments to celestial our bodies discovered at archaeological websites and at areas of worship, rock artwork with celestial imagery, and medical pondering published in neighborhood astronomy traditions together with ethnomathematics and the production of calendars. Authors contain astronomers Kim Malville, Johnson Urama, and Thebe Medupe; archaeologist Felix Chami, and geographer Michael Bonine, and lots of new authors. As an rising subfield of cultural astronomy, African cultural astronomy researchers are curious about education scholars in particular for doing examine in Africa. the 1st a part of the amount includes classes and workouts to assist the start pupil of African cultural astronomy. incorporated are workouts in archaeoastronomy, cultural anthropology, and naked-eye astronomy penned via authors who use those frequently use those equipment for his or her study. This number of classes and study papers presents a starting place for the cultural astronomy researcher drawn to doing paintings in Africa.
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Additional resources for African Cultural Astronomy: Current Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy research in Africa
Sample text
In pile sort tasks, individuals are given certain designed categories to sort out according to their Use of Ethnographic Methods in Cultural Astronomy Research 27 choice. Pile sorts could be used to collect data on social relations among people. Some Anthropologists have used pile sorts technique to collect information on a variety of things such as relevant behaviors on a number of diverse cultural patterns (Weller and Romney, 1990). To use the pile sort, the items to be studied are usually presented in cards.
They also introduced special chiseling tools and pottery. Some archeologists, anthropologists, linguists and historians have attempted to reconstruct the coming of man to Africa using language/linguistic phenomena as 36 B. U. Eze their guide. They distinguished between Semitic and Kushitic groups of people – all found in the North East of Africa. There is a group that spoke the Khoisan language – these existed in southern part of Africa about 5000 years ago. The third group – the Niger-Congo stock are found west of lake Chad and are called West Sudanic people.
At the end of the study it was tested for reliability and it was quite encouraging. In-depth Interview This is a process designed to elicit more information on a research topic. In Ethnographic research involving cultural astronomy, in-depth interview and at times intimate interview is used and that is part of the reason for choosing Key Informants. Key Informants are better disposed for in-depth interview since they are quite knowledgeable in the focus of the research. In-depth interview yields more information than a general survey which picks respondents or informants at random.