Cultural Astronomy of the Ancestral Puebloan: Chaco, Hovenweep, Mesa Verde and Wupatki

Based on his primary and literature research, Bryan Bates will share his experiences as a cultural astronomer and weave together the evolution of how astronomical observations contributed information to and how it was used by the Ancestral people of the Four Corners region.  For these Puebloans, science and religion melded to forecast changes in climate, survival activities such as hunting and gathering foods as well as agriculture, and reveal tremendous depth in traditional knowledge used within their societies.