On the Astronomical Orientation of the Square Talayots of Mallorca

On these issues, see Aramburu-Zabala Higuera J. , El patrón de asentamiento de la cultura talayótica de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca, 1998). For a good review on typical talayotic monuments of the island of Menorca, see Massanet Plantalamor L. , La arquitectura prehistòrica i protohistòrica de Menorca i el seu marc cultural (Treballs del Museu de Menorca, 12; Mahón, 1991).

For the location of most of the monuments see Aramburu-Zabala J. Garrido C. Sastre V. , Guía arqueológica de Mallorca (Palma de Mallorca, 1998). Also relevant is Belmonte J. A. Hoskin M. , Reflejo del Cosmos (Madrid, in press), chaps. 29–34.

For the data on the orientation of the circular talayots, see Aramburu-Zabala , op. cit. (ref. 1), 250–4. For the orientation of the sanctuaries of Mallorca, see Roselló García J. Bisquerra Fornés J. Hoskin M. , “Orientations of talayotic sanctuaries of Mallorca”, Archaeoastronomy, no. 25 (2000), S58–64.

For the orientations of the megalithic and cyclopean monuments (dolmens, navetas and taulas) of Menorca see: Hoskin M. Núñez Morales J. J. , “The orientation of burial monuments of Menorca”, Archaeoastronomy, no. 16 (1991), S15–42; Hoskin M. , “The orientation of the taulas of Menorca (1): The southern taulas”, Archaeoastronomy, no. 14 (1989), S117–36; Hoskin M. Hochsieder P. Knösel D. , “The orientation of the taulas of Menorca (2): The remaining taulas”, Archaeoastronomy, no. 15 (1990), S37–48. A very complete summary of all these articles can be found in Hoskin M. , Temples, tombs and their orientations: A new perspective on Mediterranean prehistory (Bognor Regis, 2001), chaps. 4 and 11.

In the last decade, the island of Mallorca has been extensively fenced by new land owners (most of them Northern Europeans). Consequently, several monuments that were accessible some years ago, are accessible no longer.

The openings to northeast and southwest of the valley where Son Perot is located give no clue to whether the significant orientation is sunrise at the summer solstice or sunset at the winter one; and the same is true of most of the monuments we visited. This is why we will consider absolute values of the declination in the following discussion.

One possible reason could be the local weather. The dominant wind in the Balearics is the tramuntana, a strong wind from the N-NE, and this might be the reason why several monuments had their entrances opposite to that general direction. However, the wind alone cannot explain the internal coherency of our measurements.