Archaeoastronomy and Conflict: On the Orientation of Prehistoric Funerary Monuments in Western Sahara

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper by Rodríguez-Antón and colleagues deal with the orientation of Prehistoric funerary and ritual dry-stone monuments in Western Sahara. For that, the authors present a statistical analysis of the orientation of over 217 sites based on in situ data.

The Introduction gives the general geographical, archaeological and political context in which this research is developed. The authors emphasize previous research on these topics in close regions where astronomical alignments or topographic features were considered important for the orientation of monuments. The aim of this paper is to present “an approach to the cosmovisions of those Prehistoric Saharan communities framed in the perspective of Cultural Astronomy, in particular, Archaeoastronomy” (lines 73-74), exploring possible connections between these monuments’ construction and landscape particularities, and relations with celestial bodies or phenomena (lines 77-80). The Materials and Methods section is properly written and divided into Data sample, Methodology, and Data analysis. In the Results, firstly the paper gives data on the role of topography in the sample under study, followed by the orientation of the monuments, orientation by types of monuments, and lunar orientations. The Discussion section gives an interesting and complete discussion of the data obtained, also in comparison to other studies in the Mediterranean and western Europe. In the Conclusions, the authors sum up the pieces of evidence, and main conclusions, but also present future research directions. The paper includes an Appendix with the different site’s data.

The manuscript is scientifically sound and the methodological framework is adequate for the topic under analysis. The different figures that accompany the text are very informative, adapted to the paper content and generally well-prepared (but see below). The bibliography is also well-elaborated and includes updated references. This is an important contribution towards the documentation of threatened heritage, with data obtained in situ for an uncommonly large sample. I found the discussion of the waning moon’s relevance in this type of construction to be particularly interesting. Overall the paper fits the journal’s scope and standards of Sustainability, especially considering the special issue on Sacred Landscapes and Astronomical Heritage. Considering all of this, I recommend the acceptance after a few minor reviews:

·        The acronyms present at the top of the graphs in Fig. 10 and 11 are helpful for colleagues with colour blindness. Please add them to Figure 12 as well and check the caption and its relation with the colours present in the graph.

·        Line 190, remove “:”

·        We advise that Figure 13 be remade by changing the colour scheme and eventually adding the acronyms as in previous figures. These orange and green colours are undiscernible for colour-blind colleagues (e.g., deuteranopia). Available open-access software such as Color Oracle allows checking if Figures have problems with the colour selection.

·        Line 355, delete one of the “.”

·        Line 366, check the sentence

·        Line 368, check the use of “(“ and “–“

·        Delete the “placeholder texts” on the Supplementary Materials, Author Contributions and Data Availability Statement

 

 

I found your manuscript very interesting and I am looking forward to developments in this line of research. Congratulations.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. They will surely improve the final version of the paper and will make it more accessible.

I have include your  suggestions and review the English spelling.

Reviewer 2 Report

I would advise to add some context of the space heritage, the sky as an element of the cultural heritage to the arcticle.  

Perhaps the UNESCO’s work, the concepts of “Starlight Reserves” and
“Dark Sky Parks”  could be mentioned, as well as UNESCO world heritage convention 1972.

see: Cotte M, Ruggles C (2010) Astronomical heritage in the context of the UNESCO world heritage convention: developing a professional and rational approach. In: Heritage sites of astronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the context of the world heritage convention. A thematic study. ICOMOS–IAU, Paris,

Additionally, it should be added how sky could be/is an element of the  cultural landscape,  how it affects the position of the landscape, how it is anchored in people beliefs. 

 

Author Response

I really appreciate your suggestion and I have include some lines referring the adequation of both the monuments and the landscape itself to the requisites for a declaration of Starlight reseve and tangible astronomical heritage.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is very innovative and paves the way for a new extremely important and still developing archaeological field. Therefore, the paper undoubtedly deserves to be published. 

However, some sections should be reconsidered. The introduction should begin with a more precise summary of the topics that the paper will cover and of the results that the authors aim to reach. This section comes too late (e.g. ll. 73-88)  and the reader is initially confused.

There are some stylistic elements to reconsider and the English needs to be revised by a mother tongue. Generally, I would suggest to short some sentences (e.g. l. 127 'such as' instead of 'like'; ll. 132-133 'consist on' not clear, 'et al.' I would italicised; in ll. 144; 146-147 the sentences are too long and I would separate them in two or three different sentences; l. 415 'deep' better than 'profound'; l. 417 separate the sentences... too long phrase; same in ll. 425-427)

In line 217 you may want to add a footnote with more bibliography. The visibility from distance of a burial monument or a temple has been studied by several scholars (from the Bronze Age until Late antiquity and even later... see e.g., temples in Anatolia and Cyprus, the Herodion in Palestine... but you may want to compare this with other Prehistoric sites e .g., more similar patters in North Africa etc...).

The comparisons in lines 392 are really clear and appreciated.

I would strengthen the conclusion in lines 438-440, to convince more the reader; they authors may want to support it with more evidence in the following lines.

 

 

 

Author Response

I really appreciate your comments and suggestions, I consider they will improve the quality of the paper.

The English is being revised by a native speaker, since English is not the mother tongue of none of the authors.

I have introduced more references for the topics suggested and rewritten some lines in both the introduction and conclusions in order to clarify dome of the ideas and the aim of the paper.

 Thank you very much for the review. I hope to send a second version improved and have fulfilled your requirements.

Reviewer 4 Report

Some clarifications are requested in the "notes to the text".

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I really appreciate your comments and suggestions. I have added some remarks in the sections marked in the text that I belive they provide relevant information for a better understanding of the work.

Thank you very much. I hope to have fulfilled your requirements and to submit a second version of the paper improved.