An archaeology lecturer from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom spoke to UT students, faculty and members of the community Tuesday night about the Minoan Constellations Project.

Evangelos Kyriakidis is an author of two books and a wide variety of articles on iconography. His latest book, "Archaeology of Ritual," was published in November 2007.

The project focuses on iconographical "floating" objects depicted on gold signet rings from Minoan society. The objects are dubbed "floating" because they do not appear to be standing on the ground.

The interesting thing about these objects is they seem to correlate with constellations and share similar traits such as having a stable direction, being in a stable basic form and existing in a varied group of items, Kyriakidis said.
"This should change the way we view the history of constellations"
-Evangelos Kyriakidis, lecturer and author
After studying the rings, Kyriakidis developed the constellation hypothesis, which matches some of the basic shapes and patterns of the objects to constellations. Some of the matches include constellations like Orion, Hydra and Taurus.

"The constellation hypothesis seems to fit with all the traits and peculiarities of the floating objects," he said. "The position in the sky is very good with the relative position of the items on the rings."

The rings were very small, and were worn on the pinky finger as "show off pieces," Kyriakidis said. They also could have been worn as zodiac pieces, to show when someone was born.

Kyriakidis said creating the details on the rings was highly specialized work because at the time there were no significant magnification tools.

"Whatever information you put in there must be very important," he said.

He said his next step is to see if connections exist between the objects, constellations and the time of season. This study could unlock more secrets about these mysterious rings.

The East Tennessee Society, a local chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America, hosted the event. Its next speaker will be on Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in McClung Museum.