A Multi-Site Ethnoastronomical Study of African Stellar Navigators and Their Communities

该奖项为博士后研究和培训的学生提供奖学金支持。这名学生提出的研究项目名为“非洲恒星导航员及其社区的多站点民族天文学研究”。这名学生在加州大学圣克鲁斯分校获得了天文学和天体物理学博士学位，她将通过重点研究恒星导航以及非洲的恒星导航员和他们的社区来研究天文知识的使用现状及其所处的政治和社会经济环境。更具体地说，通过对突尼斯和东非厄立特里亚马萨瓦周围地区的初步实地考察，该学生将研究非当地技术的全球化如何改变了资源的分配、仪式、特权和天文知识的定义。这位博士后将在突尼斯与星际航海家、他们的现代航海同行以及岛上其他居民的样本进行人种学访谈。这项研究的一个目标是拍摄科尔肯纳群岛几名渔民关于使用恒星导航的采访，并记录与其中一名恒星导航人员的乘船旅行。这段视频将成为热带地区天文馆表演的基础。在厄立特里亚的实地工作将包括审查阿法尔恒星导航知识的起源，在厄立特里亚独立过程中使用恒星导航的程度，以及阿法尔人民在争取独立的斗争过程中政治和社会经济地位的变化。一种假设是，导航设备和技术的引入改变了谁可以获得、控制和专门掌握恒星导航的天文知识，这1)减少了对恒星导航的需求，2)降低了恒星导航员的经济地位，因此，3)限制了恒星导航知识的传播。另一种假设是，由于光污染等因素，电动路灯技术的全球化导致了对恒星名称和星座的天文知识的减少。该项目不仅将促进非正规科学教育，还将促进科学和技术研究，该研究着眼于与科学技术发展有关的智力、价值、过程和影响因素。学生将运用考古天文学和民族天文学的交叉学科领域，它们结合了天文学、考古学和人类学。

This award provides fellowship support to a student for post-doctoral research and training. The student's proposed research project is entitled `A Multi-Site Ethnoastronomical Study of African Stellar Navigators and Their Communities.` The student, who received her Ph.D in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will study the current use of astronomical knowledge and the political and socioeconomic environments in which it is situated by focusing on stellar navigation, and the stellar navigators and their communities in Africa. More specifically, through a preliminary site investigation of Tunisia and the region around Massawa, Eritrea, East Africa, the student will examine how the globalization of non-local technologies has shifted the allocation of resources, the rites, privileges, and definitions of astronomical knowledge. The post-doctoral student will conduct ethnographic interviews in Tunisia with the stellar navigators, their modern navigation counterparts, and a sample of other inhabitants of the island. One goal of the research is to videotape interviews of several fishermen of the Kerkennah Islands about the use of stellar navigation and to record a boat trip with one of the stellar navigators. The video will be the basis of a planetarium show on the tropic. Field work in Eritrea will include an examination of the origins of the Afar stellar navigation knowledge, the extent to which stellar navigation was used in Eritrean independence, and the change in political and socioeconomic status of the Afar people over the course of the struggle for independence. One hypothesis is that the introduction of navigation equipment and techniques has changed who has access to, control of, and expertise in the astronomical knowledge of stellar navigation by 1) decreasing the need for stellar navigation, 2) decreasing the economic status of the stellar navigators, and therefore, 3) limiting the transmission of the knowledge of stellar navigation. Another hypothesis is that the globalization of electric street lamp technology has contributed to a decrease in astronomical knowledge of stellar names and constellations due to, among other factors, light pollution. This project will not only contribute to informal science education, but also to science and technology studies, which looks at the intellectual, value, process and impact factors related to the development of science and technology. The student will employ the interdisciplinary fields of archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy, which combine astronomy, archaeology, and anthropology.