October 2002 - Nr. 10
Scientists Find Prehistoric Observatory in Saxony-Anhalt
TWIG - Archeologists digging at a wooded site near Nebra (Saxony-Anhalt) have discovered what they believe is the oldest astronomical observatory ever encountered. The research team was led to the site after analyzing soil deposits on a 3,600-year-old bronze disc that was found by looters and recovered by the state earlier this year. They traced the find, which bears images of heavenly bodies, to southwest Saxony-Anhalt, where they uncovered a circular embankment that bronze-age astronomers may have used to watch the movements of the sun, moon and stars.
"The structure, used together with the disc, served to keep track of time, which was important for planting and harvesting," says Harald Meller, director of Saxony-Anhalt’s State Museum for Prehistory in Halle. "Here they were able to determine with accuracy the course of the sun from the winter solstice to the summer solstice." The observatory, about 200 yards in diameter and surrounded by a trench, is thought to have originally included a wooden palisade and may have been in use for 1,000 years.
The discovery of the site serves as a happy epilogue to an archeological mystery that began in 1999, when the bronze disc, the oldest-known image of the cosmos, was first offered for sale to museums in Berlin and Munich. It was quickly recognized as a stolen artifact and disappeared from the market until 2001, when its illegal owners tried to set up a deal to sell it back to the state from a safe haven in Switzerland. Swiss police, who had been alerted to the deal by German authorities, arrested the owners during a fake sales meeting in Basel, and the disc was restored to Saxony-Anhalt by court order in March 2002.
Archeologist Wolfhard Schlosser of Ruhr University in Bochum, a specialist in astronomical finds, says evidence is strong that the disc and the observatory belong together. "The bronze disc with its precisely rendered astronomical images was created in central Germany. This is indicated by clear topographical references to the Brocken massive in the Harz region." The 12-inch disc is decorated with gold-foil emblems that archeologists have identified as a ship, stars, crescent moon and sun or full moon. A cluster of seven gold dots has been interpreted as a picture of the Pleiades as it appeared 3,600 years ago.
Museum officials say the observatory will be reconstructed and made accessible to visitors when excavations have been completed. "After all, the place is conceptually related to the megalithic structure at Stonehenge, England," says Meller. More than 100 artifacts have been found at the site since archeologists began digging there last month, including a spiral ring fragment, once used as a neck ornament, from around 700 BC.
