What is the relationship between Stonehenge and the sun? Emeritus Professor Clive Ruggles outlines his research on the English monument.
Discover the way astronomy, when applied to archaeology, can reveal the past in this illustrated presentation by Emeritus Professor Clive Ruggles as he draws both from his recent book "Stonehenge—Sighting the Sun" and a major lunar standstill that he observed at Stonehenge in 2024.
He 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 the interesting archaeological questions this raises. Then he will discuss alignments of the moon and whether—as some have suggested—its movements along the horizon were monitored by our prehistoric forebears and marked and celebrated, along with the sun and the seasons, at Stonehenge and elsewhere.
Professor Ruggles will touch on a few other historical sites where new research is impacting our knowledge of past civilisations.
Clive Ruggles is Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester.
He came to Leicester in 1982 with a mixed background in mathematics, astrophysics and archaeology. After 2 years as a Research Assistant in the Department of Mathematics working on statistical applications in archaeology he taught Computing Studies (later Mathematics and Computer Science) before transferring in 1997 into the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, where he became Professor of Archaeoastronomy in 1999. Ruggles has served as President of the International Society for Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy in Culture (1999-2005), the Prehistoric Society (2006-10), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU)’s Commissions for the History of Astronomy (2009-12) and Astronomy and World Heritage (2015-18). From 2008 to 2018 he coordinated the IAU’s Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative jointly with UNESCO and he continue to advise governments on potential World Heritage nominations relating to astronomy. In 2017 Ruggles was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Agnes Mary Clerke Medal for a 'lifetime of distinguished work in the overlapping areas of archaeology astronomy and the history of science'.
