Description
Goseck ring is one of the best preserved and extensively investigated of the many similar structures built at around the same time. Its preservation and investigation have led to the belief that it was a solar observatory, although some archaeologists question this. In the first opening of the site, a state archaeologist Harald Meller called it a milestone in archaeological research.
Traces of the original configuration reveal that the Goseck ring consisted of four concentric circles, a mound, a ditch, and two wooden palisades. The palisades had three sets of gates facing southeast, southwest, and north. At the winter solstice, observers at the center would have seen the sun rise and set through the southeast and southwest gates. Potsherds at the site suggests that the observatory was built ca. 4900 BCE because they have linear designs compared to standard chronologies of pottery styles.
The cultural nexus that produced the circle is called the Stroke-Ornamented Pottery Culture. Archaeologists generally agree that Goseck circle was used for astronomical observation. Together with calendar calculations, it allowed coordinating an easily judged lunar calendar with the more demanding measurements of a solar calendar, embodied in a spiritual religious context. However, archaeologists disagree about whether all circles were used for the same purpose.
Read more about this topic: Goseck Circle
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)