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:
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)