Knowledge of the Sky among Indigenous Peoples of the South American Lowlands—First Archaeoastronomical Analyses of Orientations at Mounds in Uruguay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In Figure 7c on page 17 the upper two images are well publicized ones of the Aboriginal Australian Emu In The Sky. If they are to be used they must be properly designated as such. Otherwise they must be removed.

The title says that the paper is an analysis of mounds in Uruguay, but a large portion of the paper spend time discussing cultural astronomy that is not Uruguayan. Before this is published the title should be broadened in some way to expand beyond Uruguay or a good explanation of why so much time is spent on other cultures should be added, or better yet both.

Author Response

Review Report 1

Accept after minor revision (corrections to minor methodological errors and text editing) English language and style are fine/minor spell check required.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors:

In Figure 7c on page 17 the upper two images are well publicized ones of the Aboriginal AustralianEmu In The Sky. If they are to be used they must be properly designated as such. Otherwise theymust be removed.

The third reviewer's suggestion was considered and the figure and reference to the Australian case were removed.

The title says that the paper is an analysis of mounds in Uruguay, but a large portion of the paper spend time discussing cultural astronomy that is not Uruguayan. Before this is published the title should be broadened in some way to expand beyond Uruguay or a good explanation of why so much time is spent on other cultures should be added, or better yet both.

New title is suggested: Knowledge of the sky among indigenous peoples of the South American lowlands. First archaeoastronomical analyses of orientations at mounds in Uruguay.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Aim of the paper, main contributions and strengths:

The paper analyzes, from the perspective of archaeoastronomy and relying on pre-existing ethnoastronomical works from other neighboring regions, the possible astronomical meanings of a set of mounds in the lowlands of Uruguay. This is an original proposal, part of a pioneering effort in archaeoastronomy in Uruguay. The work has the strength of thinking in terms of a cultural landscape and approaching it in a broad way, proposing the possibility of little explored modes of territorial appropriation in archaeoastronomy, associated with hunter-gatherers. From the analysis of the spatial distribution of mounds and ethnographic evidence in neighboring regions, they propose the relevance of the Milky Way, the Southern Cross and the full moon near the June solstice. The work is also novel because usually these events and astronomical objects are little taken into account by archaeoastronomical analyses inspired by work in Europe.

Areas of weakness, methodological inaccuracies, etc.

One of the problems of the article that needs to be improved is that the explanation of the criteria for selecting the observation points from which the measurements were taken, as well as the points on the horizon towards which they were taken, is not very clear. This is a crucial issue in archaeoastronomy and the structures in question are many and complex in distribution. For the argumentation of the paper to be sound the reader should get a clearer impression of why the points and sight lines being measured were chosen and how relevant they are in relation to all the others that could have been chosen. In the same vein it should be made clear whether it is understood that these relationships would have been sufficient to decide the placement of the mounds or whether they would have worked in conjunction with other criteria. In the latter case - which seems to us the most likely - it should at least be suggested what other criteria it is understood that the builders could have used. Similarly, it would be important for the paper to explore whether the proposed pattern suggests some kind of chronological sequence in the construction of the measured structures.

The comparison with Australian examples does not seem particularly relevant in the analysis of this case, beyond the fact that they share a hemisphere, and their use is not convincingly justified in this work. Ethnographic examples from neighboring regions are sufficient to justify the need to take into account the Milky Way and the Southern Cross.

The Chaco examples show the connection between June solstice and frost, not with the rainy season. While it is reasonable to expect that in another climatic zone the same astronomical events would be used to mark different atmospheric phenomena, it is important to point out this difference. Even diagrams of rainfall and temperature regimes in both regions could be shown to show the relevance of this difference.

There are some inaccuracies that need to be corrected, such as that most of the South American lowlands are intertropical.

When the text addresses the tension between the importance of the ñandú for the human populations of the region in the testimonies since colonial times, but the scarcity of their archaeological record, it proposes a solution whose argumentation is problematic. The idea proposed is that there could have been ritual taboos that reduced or prohibited the consumption of ñandú. This is justified by appealing to various arguments that present problems. For example, it is said that Chaco accounts of the hunting of the sky-ñandú would indicate that without horses the ñandú was considered a very difficult animal to hunt. But nothing in these stories justifies such a statement and this stories deal with a very particular ñandú, which in spite of this is successfully defeated, although it cannot be captured. On the other hand, the work itself provides us with a reference with a photograph of hunters on foot camouflaged for ñandú hunting, a perfect illustration that horses were not essential for this activity (figure 5 of reference 142). On the other hand, the Chaco food restrictions mentioned do not prevent the animals affected by them from being consumed, they only restrict their intake temporarily for certain people in certain particular states. This would not strongly impact the abundance in the archaeological record. In the analysis of these groups it is necessary to make more progress in the integration of the spheres of what we usually call ritual and economic. The text proposes to do so, but is halfway there.

In another order of things, the tables and their description are unclear when referring to the "declination of the Southern Cross", given that it is not a punctual object, it should be clarified how this declination is defined and why.

Completeness of the review topic covered, the relevance of the review topic, the gap in knowledge identified, the appropriateness of references, etc.

The bibliography cited is reasonable and complete, although there are some misquotations (which are pointed out in the text). In this sense, only a few citations on studies of territoriality, landscape, occupation of space and orientations in South American lowland groups could be added. As examples:

·         Hugh-Jones, C. (1988) From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia. New York: Cambridge University Press.

·          Surrallés, A. y García Hierro, P. (eds.) (2005) The Land Within. Indigenous Territory and the Perception of Enviroment.   Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.

·         Giménez, G. (2004) Territorio, paisaje y apego socio-territorial. Conaculta, Regiones culturales/ Culturas Regionales, Ediciones de la Dirección de Vinculación Regional, México, 29-50.

·         Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (1975): "Kogi Temples: introduction to symbolism and astronomy of sacred space", Colombian Journal of Anthropology, vol 19, pp. 199-246

·         López, A. M. y Giménez Benítez, S. (2009) Monte, campo y pueblo: El espacio y la definición de lo aborigen entre las comunidades mocovíes del Chaco argentino. En Ellison, N. y Martínez Mauri, M. (eds.) Paisaje, espacio y territorio. Reelaboraciones simbólicas y reconstrucciones identitarias en América Latina.   Quito: editorial Abya Yala. 163-179.

The Pereira paper cited is in our opinion too speculative and does not provide solid evidence for the present work, so we suggest not to include it.

Another problem is that it is claimed that the South American lowlands have a small number of studies of cultural astronomy in comparison with neighboring regions, we believe that today it is no longer possible to indicate this.

The work addresses an important area, contributes new ideas. It is very relevant since it integrates ethno- and archaeo-astronomy, deals archaeo-astronomically with hunter-gatherer groups, thinks in terms of landscape and not only of "large artificial structures".

In general, the text is clear, but as noted, the wording and explanation of some methodologically important points needs to be improved.

Specific comments

Specific comments on problems encountered in the text are indicated in the text file itself in the form of notes to the pdf. This file is attached to this review.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We'd like to thank the reviewer for her/his detailed review of our manuscript and the comments that helped to clarify several points. We have tried to incorporate most comments and change several of the indications poited out in the manuscript's pdf. We include a file with detailed answers to each comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I suggest inserting the four drawings of figure 2 at the same representation scale (so that the sites are dimensionally comparable).

if possible, also include aerial images of the sites in order to facilitate understanding of the space (if it is significant)

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for her/his kind words.

We have modified the figure 2 according to the sugggestion made on the scales.

The aerial photos are not included because we understand that it would not facilitate the visualization of the mound sites.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have reviewed the corrections made by the authors and believe that they are generally adequate. In my opinion, there is only one point that needs to be improved, referring to the paragraph on lines 45-50, which now says:

"A characteristic of this vast area [we understand that the text refers here to the South American lowlands] is that it appears within the tropical region. At the end of the 20th century, it was suggested that tropical cultures developed an astronomical system different from that of temperate zones [1,18,19].These systems would be conditioned by the ways in which the sky is perceived, with open areas with clear horizons generating different modes of observation and cognition than forested regions [7]."

The paragraph in its current form presents two problems. The first is that it maintains that the South American lowlands are all in the tropical zone, when in reality only a part of them -and not the largest- is (which is what had been indicated in the commentary to the version preceding paragraph). In any case, we wonder what is the point of including this paragraph when precisely the study area and a crucial part of the mentioned antecedents (all those of the Chaco, Pampa and Patagonia) are outside the intertropical area. For that, the meaning of the paragraph is unclear. Possibly it would be better to simply say that the study area is in a temperate region with open horizons, different from the intertropical forest areas mentioned by other authors and which are usually associated with the South American Lowlands.

Author Response

The reviewer is completely right, and we feel that his paragraph doen not add any relevant inforamtion for the scope of the paper, so we have removed it.