Whilst camped at Ooldea, South Australia, between 1919 and 1935, the amateur anthropologist Daisy Bates CBE (1859-1951) recorded the daily lives, lore, and oral traditions of the Aboriginal people of the Great Victoria Desert region surrounding Ooldea. Among her archived notes are stories regarding the Aboriginal astronomical traditions of this region. One story in particular, involving the stars making up the modern western constellations of Orion and Taurus, and thus referred to here as "The Orion Story", stands out for its level of detail and possible references to transient astronomical phenomena. Here, we critically analyse several important elements of "The Orion Story", including its relationship to an important secret-sacred male initiation rite. This paper is the first in a series attempting to reconstruct a more complete picture of the sky knowledge and star lore of the Aboriginal people of the Great Victoria Desert.
Australian Indigenous astronomical traditions hint at a relationship between animals in the skyworld and the behaviour patterns of their terrestrial counterparts. In our continued study of Aboriginal astronomical traditions from the Great Victoria Desert, South Australia, we investigate the relationship between animal behaviour and stellar positions. We develop a methodology to test the hypothesis that the behaviour of these animals is predicted by the positions of their celestial counterparts at particular times of the day. Of the twelve animals identified in the Ooldean sky, the nine stellar…
The oral traditions of Aboriginal cultures across Australia contain references to the presence of multiple Suns in the sky at the same time. Explanations of this have been largely regarded as symbolic or mythological, rather than observations of natural phenomena. In this paper, we examine oral traditions describing multiple Suns and analyse interpretations that could explain them. Our analysis of the oral traditions concludes that descriptions of multiple Suns fall into two main categories: one describing the changes in the path of the Sun throughout the year, and the other describing observa…
Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine two Aboriginal oral traditions from South Australia that describe the periodic changing brightness in three pulsating, red-giant variable stars: Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis), Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), and Antares (Alpha Scorpii). The Australian Aboriginal accounts stand as the only known descriptions of pulsating variable stars in any Indigenous oral tradition…
The canopy of stars is a central presence in the daily and spiritual lives of Aboriginal Tasmanians. With the arrival of European colonists, Tasmanian astronomical knowledge and traditions were interrupted and dispersed. Fragments can be found scattered in the ethnographic and historical record throughout the nineteenth century. We draw from ethnohistorical documents to analyse and reconstruct Aboriginal astronomical knowledge in Tasmania. This analysis demonstrates that stars, the Milky Way, constellations, dark nebula, the Sun, Moon, meteors, and aurorae held cultural, spiritual, and subsist…
A major focus of the archaeoastronomical research conducted around the world focuses on understanding how ancient cultures observed sunrise and sunset points along the horizon, particularly at the solstices and equinoxes. Scholars argue that observations of these solar points are useful for developing calendars, informing ritual/ceremonial practices, and predicting seasonal change. This is the foundation of the Eurocentric four-season Julian (and later Gregorian) calendar. Famous examples include Stonehenge, Newgrange, Chichen Itza, and Chankillo. Studies at these and other sites tend to focus…
The traditional cultures of Aboriginal Australians include a significant astronomical component, perpetuated through oral tradition, ceremony, and art. This astronomical knowledge includes a deep understanding of the motion of objects in the sky, which was used for practical purposes such as constructing calendars and for navigation. There is also evidence that traditional Aboriginal Australians made careful records and measurements of cyclical phenomena, recorded unexpected phenomena such as eclipses and meteorite impacts, and could determine the cardinal points to an accuracy of a few degree…
Studies in Australian Indigenous astronomical knowledge reveal few accounts of the visible planets in the sky. However, what information we do have tells us that Aboriginal people were close observers of planets and their motions, noting the relative brightness of the planets, their motions along the ecliptic, retrograde motion, the relationship between Venus and its proximity to the Sun, Venus' connection to the Sun through zodiacal light, and the synodic cycle of Venus, particularly as it transitions from the Evening Star to the Morning Star. The dearth of descriptions of planets in Aborigin…
An Aboriginal Australian Record of the Great Eruption of Eta Carinae
我们提供的证据表明，维多利亚州西北部的Boorong土著人在19世纪观察到了Eta（η）Carinae的大爆发，并将该事件纳入他们的口头传统。我们使用威廉·爱德华·斯坦布里奇（William Edward Stanbridge）在1858年的论文中提出的描述性材料，结合早期的南星星表，确定了这颗恒星以及其他没有明确命名的恒星。这一短暂的天文事件的识别支持了土著口头传统是动态的和不断发展的，而不是静态的主张。这是迄今为止文献中唯一确定的关于船底座η爆发的土著记录。
Novae and supernovae are rare astronomical events that would have had an influence on the sky-watching peoples who witnessed them. Although several bright novae/supernovae have been visible during recorded human history, there are many proposed but no confirmed accounts of supernovae in oral traditions or material culture. Criteria are established for confirming novae/supernovae in oral and material culture, and claims from around the world are discussed to determine if they meet these criteria. Australian Aboriginal traditions are explored for possible descriptions of novae/supernovae. Althou…
