Alexander Thom

Professor Alexander Thom (1894–1985) was a Scottish engineer most famous for his theory of the Megalithic yard and his studies of Stonehenge and other archaeological sites.

Life and work

Thom was a graduate of the University of Glasgow who returned there and worked as a lecturer from 1922 to 1939. He later was a professor of engineering at the University of Oxford where he became interested in the methods that prehistoric peoples used to build megalithic monuments. Thom became especially interested in the stone circles of the British Isles and France [Hutton, Ronald "The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles" Blackwell Publishing 1993 ISBN 9780631189466 p. 111 [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ifjw5Ce_NgEC&pg=RA1-PA1&dq=Thom+stone+circles+british+isles&ei=lU_mSIyyEpGgswPyyP3VDw&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U24Ft-H4YH62av-LwPh2Zg5pk5vEg] ] and their astronomical associations. Thom travelled in the company of his son Archie, measuring prehistoric sites and analysing the data created.

In 1955, Alexander Thom published [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2342494 "A statistical examination of megalithic sites in Britain"] in which he first suggested the megalithic yard as a standardised prehistoric measurement. He also attempted to classify stone circles into different morphological types.

Thom went on to identify numerous solar orientations at stone circles which led him to argue for a prehistoric calendar of 8 'months' divided by midsummer, midwinter and the two equinoxes and then subdivided by early versions of the modern Christian festivals of Whitsun, Lammas, Martinmas and Candlemas (see Scottish Quarter Days). He explored these topics further in his later books, "Megalithic sites in Britain" (Oxford, 1967), "Megalithic lunar observatories" (Oxford, 1971) and "Megalithic Remains in Britain and Brittany" (Oxford, 1978), the last written with his son Archie after they carried out a detailed survey of the Carnac stones from 1970 to 1974.

Thom's ideas met with resistance from the archaeological community but were welcomed amongst elements of 1960s counter-culture. Along with Gerald Hawkins' new interpretation of Stonehenge as an astronomical 'computer' (see Archaeoastronomy and Stonehenge), Thom's theories were adopted by numerous believers in the lost wisdom of the ancients and became commonly associated with pseudoscience, which saddened him greatly.

That stone circles had some astronomical significance to Neolithic peoples is nowadays rarely disputed and Thom has been partly, if not wholly, vindicated although his megalithic yard is still a contentious topic.

The Thom Building, housing the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford, built in the 1960s, is named after Alexander Thom.

ee also

* Archeoastronomy

Publications

A Selection
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* 1990. Thom, Alexander and Burl, Aubrey "Stone Rows and Standing Stones: Britain, Ireland and Brittany" B.A.R. 1990, ISBN 9780860547082

References

External links

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=AST&db_key=PRE&qform=AST&arxiv_sel=astro-ph&arxiv_sel=cond-mat&arxiv_sel=cs&arxiv_sel=gr-qc&arxiv_sel=hep-ex&arxiv_sel=hep-lat&arxiv_sel=hep-ph&arxiv_sel=hep-th&arxiv_sel=math&arxiv_sel=math-ph&arxiv_sel=nlin&arxiv_sel=nucl-ex&arxiv_sel=nucl-th&arxiv_sel=physics&arxiv_sel=quant-ph&arxiv_sel=q-bio&sim_query=YES&ned_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_logic=OR&author=thom%0D%0A&object=&start_mon=&start_year=1900&end_mon=&end_year=1985&ttl_logic=OR&title=&txt_logic=OR&text=&nr_to_return=200&start_nr=1&jou_pick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_day=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_entry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHORT&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&txt_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1 Thom's publications at the Astrophysics Data System]

* [http://www.britannia.com/wonder/thom.html Biography]
** [http://assets.cambridge.org/052157/2916/sample/0521572916web.pdf "Astronomy before History, by Clive Ruggles and Michael Hoskins, a chapter from the Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, Michael Hoskin ed., 1999]