The Goseck circle is a Neolithic structure in Goseck in the Burgenlandkreis district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It consists of a set of concentric ditches 75 metres (246 feet) across and two palisade rings containing gates in defined places. It is considered the earliest sun observatory currently known in the world. Interpretations of the ring suggest that European Neolithic and Bronze Age people measured the heavens far earlier and more accurately than historians have thought. The site was made public in August 2003. German media have called the site "German Stonehenge," although the use of the term henge for structures outside Britain and Ireland is disputed and it apparently has no earth bank.
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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.
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.
Excavators also found the remains of what may have been ritual fires, animal and human bones, and a headless skeleton near the southeastern gate, possibly a sign of consecration sacrifice.
There is no sign of fire or of other destruction, so why the site was abandoned is unknown. Later villagers built a defensive moat following the ditches of the old enclosure.
The first sign of the circle was a 1991 aerial survey photograph that showed circular ridges under a wheat field. The crop marks were easy to see in a season of drought. Francois Bertemes and Peter Biehl of the University of Halle-Wittenberg began a major excavation of the site in 2002. When archaeologists combined the evidence with GPS observations, they noticed that the two southern openings marked the sunrise and sunset of the winter solstice and summer solstice.
Bertemes and Biehl have continued the excavation for a few weeks each year. In 2004 a group from the University of California, Berkeley, joined the ongoing dig, giving it an international scope.
Archaeologists and state officials have reconstructed the wooden palisade of the circle. Woodworkers worked with hand tools so that the wooden posts would look more authentic. The site was opened to public on 21 December 2005, the winter solstice.