Join us at 8pm Wednesday 11th April 2012 for a lecture on Archaeoastronomy by Charles Barclay. (free for members and under-16s, others £2 on the door)
We are delighted Charles has agreed to travel from Marlborough College, Wiltshire to give us his fascinating talk, so please come along to meet him and support CADSAS.
Here is a synopsis of the lecture:
Stonehenge and Avebury in UK are sites of global importance and at the focus of this lecture on 7000 years of inherited knowledge common to all Earth’s cultures and nationalities.
The Celestial Sphere was of overarching importance in pre-light pollution skies and the first astronomies and cosmologies brought some order to an otherwise tumultuous existence.
This highly illustrated lecture covers the multinational and multicultural development of astronomical observation and takes the audience on a voyage of discovery, suggesting meaning and significance particularly in Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and other ancient sites around the World.
And a brief biography of the speaker:
Charles Barclay graduated from St Andrews University in 1986 in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Since 2004 he has been Director of the Blackett Observatory at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, where he teaches astronomy and physics. He is an Academic Visitor in the Oxford University Astrophysics Department and an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. At the forefront of UK Astronomy education, he chairs the Royal Astronomical Society education committee and is chair of examiners for Edexcel GCSE Astronomy and a Principal Moderator for Edexcel Extended Project at KS5. He is also a member of International Astronomical Union Commission 46 (Astronomy in education and development) and sits on the Science Council Education Programme Coordinating Group.