Context
The circle at Goseck is one of more than 250 ring-ditches in Germany, Austria and Croatia identified by aerial surveys, though archaeologists have investigated barely 10% of them. Goloring near Koblenz in western Germany is a similar, if later, example. Previously archaeologists thought that the enclosures might have been fortifications and were puzzled by the fact that there was no sign of buildings inside the circles.
Not all precisely laid out Neolithic and Bronze Age European religious, calendrical, or astronomical circles were stone circles of megaliths or standing stones; Stonehenge and Mnajdra are atypical examples. Even the Stonehenge site was preceded by a ditch-and-bank enclosure with timbers added later; their postholes remain. (Evidence of holes in the ground is very permanent. For example, when a posthole is left unused, it later fills with sediments, creating a characteristic pattern in an archaeological dig.) Mnajdra and the Maltese megalithic temple complexes are set in a woodless environment.
In a geographical context, the circle at Goseck is no further than 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the site where the Nebra sky disk was found. As the circle and the sky disk do not date from the same era, a link between them has been speculated about, but remains entirely unproven up to this point.
Read more about this topic: Goseck Circle
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