Page "Archaeoastronomy" Paragraph 5

The term archaeoastronomy was first used by Elizabeth Chesley Baity ( at the suggestion of Euan MacKie ) in 1973, but as a topic of study it may be much older, depending on how archaeoastronomy is defined.

Clive Ruggles says that Heinrich Nissen, working in the mid-nineteenth century was arguably the first archaeoastronomer.

Rolf Sinclair says that Norman Lockyer, working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, could be called the ' father of archaeoastronomy.

' Euan MacKie would place the origin even later, stating: "... the genesis and modern flowering of archaeoastronomy must surely lie in the work of Alexander Thom in Britain between the 1930s and the 1970s.