Andrew Hazewinkel

I am interested in sites and objects wherein overlapping experiences of the human and the supernatural coexist. Archeoastronomy, sometimes called skyscape archaeology, is a discipline that studies the orientation of ancient monuments - temples, pyramids, tombs etc. in relation to celestial phenomena - solstices, equinoxes, eclipses, and transits of comets etc. It helps us to better understand the relationships between people of protohistoric cultures and the heavens, their belief systems related to the extra-terrestrial and the afterlife, and our own relationships to the same dimensions.

This image represents a detail of a wall in a small underground room cut directly into the sandstone bedrock that forms part of the landscape of western Sicily. The small room is part of a six room complex, that extends across two levels, which is entirely cut directly into the bedrock. The main room of the complex is a bell-shaped chamber (a tholos) oval in plan measuring approximately 13 x 13.5m, and it rises to a spectacular height of almost 16m. This approximately four-story underground chamber is open to the sky, being perforated at the top by a hole roughly 80 cm in diameter.

Created c. 2500 BCE, this space has been described, largely because of its subterranean scale, as a “sort of palace”. Much remains unknown about this remarkable place, even if archeoastronomy perspectives reveal some of its secrets. It has been observed that a ray of light filtering through the aperture at the top of the tholos can act as a sundial; and that on the southern side of the chamber there is another hole through which, on the equinoxes, a ray of light passes, creating a pool of light at the very centre of the oval floor, not unlike the rays of sunlight that travel through the oculus of Pantheon in Rome creating a light pool that traverses that temple’s floor. More contemporary associations might be made between this remarkable space and the experiential light observation environments created in the landscape by the contemporary American artist James Turrell specifically his work Roden Crater (1977 - ongoing), and the work of the late American artist Nancy Holt specifically her work Sun Tunnels (1973 - 1976).

In this image, the movement expressed through the lines physically inscribed into the bedrock, through a process that is simultaneously excavation and carving, suggest a repetitive rhythmic gesture. This leads my thoughts to working-songs, and to consider if perhaps the inscribed lines have or had a sonic context. But as this remarkable space was created in a protohistoric cultural context, meaning that it was created by a culture in the artistically and imaginatively fertile moment immediately prior to the development of writing, we cannot know.

While writing these notes a print of this small section of an ancient underground wall is pinned to the crisp white, brightly lit wall of my studio. However I cannot let go of the experience of being in that underground space, wherein I had the overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by water, perhaps an ocean. It is generally understood that space was created with chthonic contexts in mind, perhaps as a palace for the dead. In the studio a friend described her impression of the space as being womb like and the image's fluidity as amniotic. Before leaving the studio and our conversation about the image, she turned to reminded me that birth and death are more closely related than we usually think, and said “it looks like an ultrasound to me”.