Product Code Database
The Goseck Circle (German: Sonnenobservatorium Goseck) is a Neolithic Europe structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
It was constructed around 4900 BC, and appears to have remained in use until around 4700 BC. Thus, it may be the oldest and best known of the circular enclosures associated with the Central European Neolithic. Currently, the site is presented officially by the state archaeologists and the local association that looks after it as a ritual or cult structure.
The circle consists of a concentric ditch 75 metres (246 feet) across and two palisade rings containing entrances in places aligned with sunrise and sunset on the winter solstice days and smaller entrances aligned with the summer solstice. Marketing materials have described the site as one of the oldest "Solar observatories" in the world, but sunrise and sunset during winter and summer solstices are the only evident astronomical alignments emphasized in the remains of the structure.
The existence of the site was made public in August 2003. It was opened for visitors in December 2005.
To preserve the endangered remains, the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt decided to conduct an excavation. It cooperated with the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology of the University of Halle-Wittenberg.
François Bertemes and Peter Biehl began a major excavation of the site in 2002. When archaeologists combined the evidence with GPS observations, they noticed that the two southern openings marked the sunrise and sunset of the winter solstice and .
Radiocarbon dating places the construction of the site close to 4900 BC, while the style of the pottery shards associate it with the stroke-ornamented ware culture of ca. 4700 BC, suggesting that the site remained in use throughout two or three centuries.
Excavators also found the remains of what may have been ritual fires, animal and human bones, and a headless skeleton near the southeastern gate, that could be interpreted as evidence of a specific burial ritual or of human sacrifice.
Bertemes and Biehl continued the excavation for a few weeks each year. In 2004, a group from the University of California, Berkeley joined the ongoing dig.
Since the end of the excavation, the site has been reconstructed. Archaeologists and state officials have rebuilt the wooden palisade of the circle using 1,675 oak poles with a height of 2.5 meters. Woodworkers worked with hand tools so that the wooden posts would look authentic. The site was opened to the public on 21 December 2005, the day of the winter solstice.
The southwestern and southeastern entrances face the direction of sunset and sunrise around the date of the winter solstice. Two of the smaller breaks in the wall face toward the equivalent direction on the summer solstice.
There is no sign of fire or of other destruction. Why the site was abandoned is unknown. Later villagers built a defensive moat following the ditches of the old enclosure.
During a ceremony at the first opening of this site to the public, state archaeologist Harald Meller called it "a milestone in archaeological research".
Its construction is dated to approximately 4900 BC, and it seems to have remained in use until about 4700 BC. This corresponds to the transitional phase between the Neolithic Europe Linear Pottery and Stroke-ornamented ware cultures. The site is one of a larger group of circular enclosures in the Elbe and Danube region, most of which show similar solstice alignments.
There has been some debate about whether the site was used to monitor the sun throughout the year or only on specific notable days, and thus about whether calling the site a "solar observatory" is appropriate. It has been suggested that the inaccurate name was adopted primarily for marketing purposes. Archaeologist Ralf Schwarz suggests the structures at the site allowed coordinating an easily judged lunar calendar with the more demanding measurements of a solar calendar through calendar calculations.Ralf Schwarz, Kreisgrabenanlagen der Stichbandkeramikkultur in Sachsen-Anhalt, Neolithic Circular Enclosures in Europe, International Workshop in Goseck (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) 7-9 May 2004 ( abstract)François Bertemes, Peter F. Biehl, Andreas Northe, Olaf Schröder: Die neolithische Kreisgrabenanlage von Goseck, Ldkr. Weißenfels. In: Archäologie in Sachsen-Anhalt. NF Bd. 2, 2004, p. 137–145.
Goseck is a stop on the tourist route, Himmelswege, linking archaeological sites in Saxony-Anhalt.
|
|
