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  • Australian Aboriginal Astronomy and Cosmology

    Author(s)
    Clarke, PA
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Clarke, Philip
    Year published
    2015
    Metadata
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    Abstract
    Australian Aboriginal ethnoastronomical traditions were recorded from a wide variety of sources in different periods. While the corpus of mythology concerning the heavens is diverse, it is unified by beliefs of a Skyworld as land with its own topography, containing plants and animals familiar to those living below. Spirits of the dead reside alongside the Creation Ancestors as celestial bodies in the Skyworld. Aboriginal hunter-gatherers used the regular movement of constellations and planets to measure time and to indicate the season, while unexpected change in the sky was seen as an omen.Australian Aboriginal ethnoastronomical traditions were recorded from a wide variety of sources in different periods. While the corpus of mythology concerning the heavens is diverse, it is unified by beliefs of a Skyworld as land with its own topography, containing plants and animals familiar to those living below. Spirits of the dead reside alongside the Creation Ancestors as celestial bodies in the Skyworld. Aboriginal hunter-gatherers used the regular movement of constellations and planets to measure time and to indicate the season, while unexpected change in the sky was seen as an omen.
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    Book Title
    Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_240
    Subject
    Astronomical and Space Sciences not elsewhere classified
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/141269
    Collection
    • Book chapters

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    • Gold Coast
    • Logan
    • Brisbane - Queensland, Australia
    First Peoples of Australia
    • Aboriginal
    • Torres Strait Islander