Golden Hat of Schifferstadt

Abstract

Four conical golden hats of the Late Bronze Age were discovered in southern Germany and western France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their users were probably members of a caste of priests or priestesses performing ceremonies linked to astronomical/calendrical knowledge. Another find discovered in central Germany, the Nebra bronze-gold disk, predates the golden hats by two to six centuries and has also been interpreted as an astronomical/calendrical ceremonial tool. From the burial location of the Nebra disk the Sun sets on the highest mountain of the Harz range, the Brocken, on the summer solstice. Here we investigate whether the burial location of the Schifferstadt golden hat also had an astronomical meaning. Our results make it possible to hypothesise that the Schifferstadt location was a natural astronomical/calendrical viewing place with the same function as several prehistoric circular enclosures, but where the natural hilly horizon of the Odenwald and the Palatinate Forest replaced the artificial horizon of the enclosures.