Cultural astronomy focuses on the many ways that people and cultures interact with celestial bodies and celestial events. More familiar names for cultural astronomy are ethnoastronomy, indigenous, endogenous, traditional or folk astronomy. Like ancient people everywhere, Africans wondered at the sky and struggled to make sense of it.
The cultural astronomy of Africans is rich with mythical figures, cosmology and cosmogony, and divination methods that use observations of celestial bodies. African cultural astronomy entwines with religious beliefs and practices, agriculture, artistic mediums, folklore, and social hierarchies. Africans use celestial bodies for practical purposes. Africans use the positions of stars for navigating at night. They observe the Sun and Moon for timekeeping and creating an accurate calendar. African women study the phases of the moon to keep track of their menses and fertility cycles. Thus, while modern astronomy is quite new and unpopular in most parts of the continent, cultural astronomy has a long and rich tradition in Africa and a far more extensive cultural impact.
To unearth the body of cultural astronomy knowledge by peoples of the different ethnic groups of Africa.
To understand the ways and degrees through which this knowledge and beliefs shaped the lived realities of the people of Africa.
To re-interpret this body of knowledge in the light of modern/western astronomy.To integrate the cultural astronomy of Africa into international science curriculum
To achieve the above objectives, the project would investigate various aspects of the culture and traditions of the diverse ethnic groups of Africa with special emphasis on:
Cosmogonies and creation myths;
Indigenous lore of celestial bodies, calendars, cycles, seasons and festivals;
Cultural representations of ethno-astronomy and archeo-astronomy;
Comparative studies on cultural astronomy.
Cultural astronomy is an interdisciplinary research field and provides a good opportunity for interaction and collaboration on astronomy, anthropology, African art, history, religion, geography, archeology, and science studies.