Rural diurnal timing practices based on stars observation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of Russian ethnoastronomy, especially knowledge of the constellations (Ursa Major, Orion’s Belt, Pleiades) that were used for time-orientation during the night. The study’s main sources are materials from the card catalogue of the Dictionary of Russian folk dialects and the Astronomical card catalogue of Ural Federal University that represent ethnoastronomical knowledge from the 1960s to the 1980s. In informants’ speech we can distinguish one group of texts, which are termed ‘orientational rules’. These texts tend to be formulaic, aphoristic, and describe the position of heavenly bodies, corresponding moments of time and action. Every rule orients one properly only during a special seasonal period, but this fact has not ever been explicitly expressed in the texts. Astronomical reconstruction of seasonal limitations of 68 texts (38 for Ursa Major, 8 for Pleiades, 22 for Orion’s Belt) was made through digital planetarium software. Analysis showed that time-reckoning based on star observation was practiced not so much in winter, as in autumn (from August till December) and spring. The reconstructed functional time period of these practices corresponds with seasonal works, represented in orientational rules and astronyms (astronomical appellations). Seasonal limitations of every constellation were also corrected with objective features of their movement in the sky that determined the most optimal and usable time for their observation. Refs 30. Figs 3.