http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bizarre-bronze-age-gold-spirals-unearthed-in-denmark_55a40780e4b0a47ac15d0386?utm_hp_ref=scienceStrange Gold Spirals Dating Back To Bronze Age Unearthed In DenmarkJacqueline Howard
Associate Science Editor, The Huffington Post
Posted: 07/14/2015 | Edited: 07/14/2015 12:38 PM EDT
A trove of 2,000 delicate gold spirals that date back to the Bronze Age was recently discovered in Denmark -- and archaeologists are trying to figure out what the ancient coils were used for.
The 3,000-year-old spirals are made of thin, flattened gold wire and were found during an excavation in the town of Boeslunde, on the Danish island of Zealand.
Flemming Kaul, the National Museum of Denmark
Flemming Kaul, the National Museum of Denmark
Each tightly wound coil is about one inch long. All together, the gold spirals weigh more than half a pound.
Remnants of a wooden box were also found at the site.
"Maybe the spirals
http://natmus.dk/presse-og-nyheder/#/pressreleases/guldspiraler-er-en-gaade-for-arkaeologerne-1186586have been attached to cords which have served as a small fringe on a hat or a parasol," Dr. Flemming Kaul, curator at the National Museum of Denmark and one of the discoverers of the gold spirals, said in a written statement. "Perhaps they have been braided into the hair or been embroidered on the suit. The fact is that we do not know, but I tend to believe they were part of a priest king’s costume or headwear."
Whether or not the spirals were part of a costume, evidence suggests that the Boeslunde site might have been a sacred place where people offered gold to their gods, Live Science reported.
Boeslunde has long been a rich source of Bronze Age gold artifacts, BBC News reported. Previous excavations there yielded several gold cups and rings.
Since there may be more gold to be found, archaeologists at the Museum Vestsjælland in Denmark plan to continue examining the area with metal detectors.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-33463497Denmark: Bronze Age gold spirals unearthed in field9 July 2015
Archaeologists are mystified by nearly 2,000 tiny golden spirals dug up in a field in eastern Denmark.
The coils, made from thin filaments about 3cm (1in) long, date from between 900BC and 700BC, according to Flemming Kaul of the National Museum in Copenhagen. But he and his colleagues aren't quite sure what they have found. "The fact is we don't know what they were for, although I'm inclined to think they were part of a priest-king's robes, perhaps a fringe on a head-piece or parasol, or maybe woven into cloth," he says on the museum's website. The gold spirals will go on display at Skaelskor City Museum next week.
They were unearthed in the Boeslunde area, a rich source of Bronze Age gold artefacts. Several gold cups and rings have been found there in the past 200 years. Remnants of a fur-lined box uncovered nearby suggest the coils were cult objects from the time when the Danes' ancestors worshipped the Sun, according to West Zealand Museum archaeologist Kirsten Christiansen. She is conducting further digs in the area, in case there's more treasure lying beneath the soil
museum site http://natmus.dk/presse-og-nyheder/#/pressreleases/guldspiraler-er-en-gaade-for-arkaeologerne-1186586
opps missed this onehttp://gizmodo.com/archaeologists-baffled-by-2-000-tiny-gold-spirals-disco-1717507894Archaeologists Baffled By 2,000 Tiny Gold Spirals Discovered In DenmarkKelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
Filed to: archaeology
7/13/15 2:15pm
Finding gold in Boeslunde, Denmark, is no huge surprise—it’s known as an area where Bronze Age gold offering are often uncovered, as curators there are explaining this month. But a recent discovery has surprised and baffled archaeologists: 2,000 tiny gold spirals. It’s a “golden enigma.”
Boeslunde is in Zealand, the large island that sits between mainland Denmark and the tip of Sweden. It’s a hotbed for archaeology in Denmark since it has served as a connective hub for thousands of years—netting recent finds as diverse as 1,000-year-old viking jewelry to actual fortresses in the past year. Boeslunde, where the spirals were discovered, is “a special sacred place in the Bronze Age where prehistoric people performed their rituals and offered gold to the higher powers,” according to the Danish National Museum’s curator, Flemming Kaul. The constant discovery of new gold around the area has spurred more thorough digs—including one by the National Museum and the local Museum Vestsjælland, which uncovered this new finding.
So, what exactly did they find? Thousands of tightly-wound gold wires, each about one inch long, that together made up more than half a pound of solid gold, which seems to have been buried in a wooden box lined with fur which has long since disintegrated. Fascinatingly, no one’s quite sure how these tiny wires were actually used—the museum calls it “a little mystery” in its press release about the find, which dates from around 900 BC.
Flemming Kaul, Nationalmuseet
But researchers do have some guesses, including Kaul, who proposes that they were decorations meant to invoke the power of the sun on the clothing of a priest or king. “The sun was one of the most sacred symbols in the Bronze Age and gold had a special magic,” he writes. “Maybe the priest-king wore a gold ring on his wrist, and gold spirals on his cloak and his hat, where they during ritual sun ceremonies shone like the sun.” Buried as carefully as they were, they could have represented a sacrifice.
Unsurprisingly—after all, who doesn’t love a good mystery involving huge amounts of gold buried for thousands of years for unknown purposes—the discovery has spurred a huge amount of public interest. So much that on Wednesday, the local museum in Skaelskor is holding a viewing event for two hours, along with a talk from a curator who will discuss the find. In the meantime, the search for more spirals—and maybe their purposes—continues in the gold field.
[National Museum of Denmark; h/t BBC]
Images: Morten Petersen/Museum Vestsjælland
opinion...mine lol
maybe not a scared site but a trading post
and maybe the edges of coins
archaeology folks don't seem to have a wide range of thinking