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A Case Study of the Picture Rocks Sun Dagger, Plus a Review of the Intentionality of Sun Daggers
Bradley E. Schaefer, James Stamm, 2020. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 23(3): 427-451.
A field study of a Hohokam sun dagger near Tucson and a review of sun daggers in the Southwest. Using two regional surveys whose declinations cluster at the solstices and equinoxes, it argues most such markers are intentional, but that chance light-and-shadow coincidences on spirals run at 20 to 33 per cent, that one spiral marking three or four dates is very unlikely, and that at Fajada Butte at most two of the four claimed markings are intentional and the lunar ones are chance. It reads sun daggers as sun shrines, not calendars.
What it's used for here
The most recent re-analysis of the Sun Dagger's intentionality.
Our copy
Research copy, for editors and curators. The work is arXiv-nonexclusive, so readers are sent to it. We keep this copy so the citation can be checked if the page changes or goes.
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Cite it
Schaefer, B. E., & Stamm, J. (2020). A Case Study of the Picture Rocks Sun Dagger, Plus a Review of the Intentionality of Sun Daggers. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 23(3): 427-451. https://doi.org/10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01
@article{schaefer2020picture,
author = {Schaefer, Bradley E. and Stamm, James},
title = {A Case Study of the Picture Rocks Sun Dagger, Plus a Review of the Intentionality of Sun Daggers},
journal = {Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 23(3): 427-451},
year = {2020},
doi = {10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01}
}TY - JOUR TI - A Case Study of the Picture Rocks Sun Dagger, Plus a Review of the Intentionality of Sun Daggers AU - Schaefer, Bradley E. AU - Stamm, James PY - 2020 JO - Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 23(3): 427-451 DO - 10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01 UR - https://doi.org/10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01 ER -
Schaefer, Bradley E. and James Stamm. “A Case Study of the Picture Rocks Sun Dagger, Plus a Review of the Intentionality of Sun Daggers.” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 23(3): 427-451 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3724/sp.j.1440-2807.2020.03.01.