Gold bowls from Terheide

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A find from the younger Bronze Age is called the Terheide gold bowl . The road construction worker Jacob Behrend Braams discovered the two gold bowls in 1872 in the town of the same name in the area of ​​today's integrated community of Holtriem in East Friesland . Originally they were in a clay pot, but it was not kept. It is unclear whether the find is a victim, treasure or grave find. The gold bowls can be seen today in the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover . Duplicates are in the East Frisian State Museum in Emden .

The gold bowls from Terheide

Find history

While digging a shallow trench on the shoulder of the country road from Dornum to Sandhorst, Jacob Behrend Braams came across a hard object just a cut of the spade. When he tried to get it out of the way, it turned out to be not a stone, but the remnants of a clay pot containing two golden capsules . The Provincial Museum Hanover, the forerunner of today's Lower Saxony State Museum Hanover , recognized the importance of the bowls and bought them. The museum paid the finder 100 thalers . That was more than the material value at the time.

It is unclear who once deposited the bowls there and why he did so. To date, it is not certain whether the find is a sacrifice, treasure or grave find. Possibly there was a mound of earth that had been leveled earlier at the site. However, there are no indications of a grave.

construction

One of the bowls is 6.6 centimeters high and 9.5 centimeters in diameter and weighs only 53.7 grams. The second bowl is 6.1 centimeters high, 9.8 centimeters in diameter and weighs 50 grams. They are made of gold with 0.1 percent silver and 0.03 percent lead added.

It was probably one and the same person who used a hammer to drive the two disks out of a sheet of gold that was almost 100 millimeters in diameter and almost five millimeters thick. Concentric circles, lines and rows of dots are grouped around a central hump on the outer bottom of the vessel . According to the state of the art at the time, these could not be engraved, but had to be individually hammered in with a hammer and punch .

interpretation

Gold vessels of this type are among the rarest finds from the Bronze Age. There is a concentration of finds in southern Scandinavia, a region in which, with around 60, most of the gold bowls were discovered. According to popular opinion, the Terheider vessels thus prove that East Frisia belongs to the Nordic Circle . The symbolism used on the Terheider bowls was very common at that time and was also used on gold hats and gold disks such as the gold disk from Moordorf . The circles are interpreted as symbols for the sun. It is possible that they also had an encrypted calendar function. One of the heaviest gold bowls of that era is the Altstetten gold bowl , which was found near Zurich in 1906.

Due to the similarity with the find of the Eberswalder gold treasure , the gold bowls from Terheide are dated to the younger Bronze Age. What they were used for is unclear. They are unlikely to be used as drinking vessels "as they show no signs of use". Possibly they were used in cultic acts.

literature

  • Stephan Veil: The two gold bowls from Terheide . In: Jan F. Kegler, Ostfriesische Landschaft (Ed.): Land der Entdeckungen - land van ontdekkingen 2013. The archeology of the Frisian coastal area , Soltau-Kurier Norden, Norden 2013, ISBN 3-940601-16-0 . P. 413
  • Hans-Jürgen Häßler: Early gold: prehistoric and early historical gold finds from Lower Saxony . Isensee, Oldenburg 2003, ISBN 3-89995-066-6 .
  • Wolfgang Schwarz: Two gold cups in a clay pot . In: Archaeological Commission for Lower Saxony eV (Ed.): Archeology in Lower Saxony, Volume 7 . Isensee, Oldenburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-89995-667-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Ernst Behre , Hajo van Lengen : Ostfriesland. History and shape of a cultural landscape , Aurich 1995, ISBN 3-925365-85-0 , p. 62.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Stephan Veil: The two gold bowls from Terheide . In: Jan F. Kegler, Ostfriesische Landschaft (Ed.): Land der Entdeckungen - land van ontdekkingen 2013. The archeology of the Frisian coastal area , Soltau-Kurier Norden, Norden 2013, ISBN 3-940601-16-0 . P. 413.
  3. ↑ a b Internet site for the special exhibition "Land of Discoveries - the archeology of the Frisian coastal area": The gold bowls from Terheide - discovered during road construction , viewed on March 13, 2013.
  4. ↑ Samtgemeinde Holtriem: Die Goldschalen von Westerholt-Terheide ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / urlaub.holtriem.de