Sunstone from Horsten

The sun stone of Horsten is an irregularly edged, about 1.1 meters high and somewhat wider slab made of reddish gray porphyry granite .

The original of the sun stone is in the school in the Friedeburg district of Horsten , which is around 18 kilometers southwest of Wilhelmshaven in Lower Saxony . There is a replica in Horsten on “Am Warfacker”.

Coat of arms with the sunstone

17 concentric circles (external diameter 77 cm) are worked into the flat front  . The center is a hole 3.4 cm in diameter. The stone was found west of Horsten at the beginning of the 20th century, where it was used as the basis of a garden gate until 1963. He was recognized and recovered by the researcher Karl-Heinrich Marschalleck .

There are no findings that allow classification of the unusual stone restored in 1981. There are similar representations on Bronze Age finds and rock carvings in southern Scandinavia . On the British Isles you come across this motif in rock carvings ( cup-and-ring markings ) and in megalithic systems . Possibly the representations had a meaning in the context of a Bronze Age cult.

See also

• Sunstone from Beckstedt
• Sunstone from Harpstedt
• Klokkestenen

literature

• Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The sun stones from Beckstedt, Harpstedt and Horsten , pp. 19-21, in: If stones could talk , Volume III, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1995, ISBN 3-7842-0515-1 .
• Johannes Groht: Menhirs in Germany. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-943904-18-5 , p. 230.
• HA Lauer: In: State Museum for Natural History and Prehistory (Hrsg.): Archaeological Monuments between Weser and Ems Oldenburg Research New Series , Volume 13, Isensee-Verlag, Oldenburg 2000, page 464

Coordinates: 53 ° 27 ′ 37.5 "  N , 7 ° 50 ′ 16.2"  E