the arminghall henge in space and time willem beex and john peterson

The Arminghall Henge in space and time

Willem Beex and John Peterson

NORWICH

Location

The first view of the Henge

Photographed by Wing Commander Insall, V.C on 18th June 1928

Published: Antiquity 3.2 (1929)

N

HENGE

CHAPEL HILL

Neolithic and Bronze Age environment

Landscape and midwinter sunset

Landscape and midwinter sunset

Chapel Hill

18 Dec 2002 15:35

Calculation of sun’s path at mid winter sunset

The apparent altitude of the sun’s centre, h, and its azimuth are approximately related (for h < 4 deg.) by a straight line:

Where is the azimuth of the sun’s centre, is the observer’s latitude, is the obliquity of the ecliptic andr is the increase in apparent altitude due

to refraction.

h = –Cos Cos + Sin

+ rSin

Sources of information and verification

The formula for ‘h’ is derived from a paper by G. R. andP. F. Freeman (on Stonehenge) presented to the 33rd annual meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association and published in 2001.

Results of calculations were checked against those published in John North’s “Stonehenge” (1996).

By trial and error it was established that a value for the refraction of 0.0081 radians gave the best fit of spreadsheet values to those published by North.

MWSS Simulation (spreadsheet)

Now

MWSS Simulation (spreadsheet)

5000 years BP

Source: http://www.carrowkeel.com/sites/croaghpatrick/reek2.html

Crough Patrick Rolling Sun

Crough Patrick Rolling Sun

Crough Patrick Rolling Sun

Crough Patrick Rolling Sun

Crough Patrick Rolling Sun

Excavation Plan (1936)

Location

Orientation

Rectified aerial photograph

Rectified AP, closeup

Orientations compared

Axis of Henge

MW sunset (last flash) - 5000 BP

SOUTHWEST

MW sunset - now

Contour lines by theOrdnance Survey

21000 21500 22000 22500 23000 23500 24000 24500 25000 25500

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

5000

5500

6000

6500

DTM created in Surfer

DTM transferred to CAD

Building the henge

Adding textures and shades

Inserting sun and trajectory

Creating the animation

Conclusions• Position of the Henge is northeast of the most

prominent hill in the area

• A midwinter sunset roll down would have been visible in 4,000 BP

• This is the first accurate determination of the Henge orientation

• Orientation is not accurately towards MWSS

• VR allows us to explore alternative hypotheses

THE END