This volume summarises the proceedings of a conference which took place at the University of Oxford in September 1981. Held under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union and the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science, the meeting reviewed research in Old World Archaeoastronomy. The publisher received the final typescript for production in March 1982. The papers in this book are concerned with shedding light on a controversial aspect of European prehistory, especially that of north-west Europe: was astronomy practised here in the late Neolithic and bronze ages, and if so, what was its purpose? These questions are of obvious interest to prehistorians, but fresh interest in them has been stimulated largely by those whose professional background is in the pure and applied sciences, while they raise technical issues which have aroused the interest of statisticians and astronomers.
