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<< Our Photo Pages >> Pömmelte Kultstätte - Timber Circle in Germany in Saxony-Anhalt

Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 10 December 2020  Page Views: 16365

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Pömmelte Kultstätte Alternative Name: Ringheiligtum Pömmelte
Country: Germany Land: Saxony-Anhalt Type: Timber Circle
Nearest Town: Magdeburg  Nearest Village: Pömmelte
Latitude: 51.997255N  Longitude: 11.799626E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
5 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
5 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
5

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I have visited· I would like to visit

eirrac5 would like to visit

CharcoalBurner89 visited on 5th Nov 2022 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 3 Access: 5 Unfortunately, the visitor center is not yet open (although still under construction). The ansient site is really extremely impressive and captivated me for a long time.

Klingon visited on 4th Aug 2018 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 3 Access: 5

sirius_b visited on 1st Aug 2017 - their rating: Cond: 5 Amb: 4 Access: 5 fully reconstructed site (wooden poles) with lots of in depth information in German and English. A huge wooden structure enables a magnificent view of the site. Regularly used for cultural events like theater and concert performances.

fornjotr have visited here

Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 5 Ambience: 3.33 Access: 5

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : View through gates of different areas. (Vote or comment on this photo)
A 115 metre diameter timber circle or woodhenge in Saxony-Anhalt which has been excavated by Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. The site dates to 2250 BCE was discovered in 1991 thanks to aerial photography archaeologists say it was in use for about 250 years.

17 circular sacrificial holes/graves were found, one of which contained various offerings and remains of bodies. Just outside of this, the grave of a chieftain was found.

Our condition rating is for the reconstruction, the actual site would be a '1' out of 5. We first reported on the excavations here in 2008, the 4300 year old German Woodhenge is now open to the public

Page originally by Alex Hunger

Evidence from recent excavations at the Pömmelte enclosure in Central Germany suggests that circular or henge-like enclosures were monumental sanctuaries that served as venues for communal gatherings, ritual activities and performance, with significant solar alignments. A mirroring of the design of the Nebra Stardisc is also proposed. More details in the comments on our page.

Note: The results of excavations over the last 15 years suggest this site was closely linked to Stonehenge. Franziska Knoll the lead archaeologist argues the wooden structure may have been built by people who had visited the henges of Britain.
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Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : Ringheiligtum Pömmelte Image copyright: LostPlacesMagdeburg, hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : Kreisgrabenanlage in Pömmelte - 360° Pömmelte - Zackmünde Barby / Germany Deutsches "Stonehenge" in Pömmelte See where this picture was taken. [?] Here you can see the panorama with the interactive 360 degree viewer Here you can see the large panorama and the original size of the panorama (18 single shots) © All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image... (Vote or comment on this photo)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by CharcoalBurner89 : November 5, 2022 (Vote or comment on this photo)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : 360° view shortly after sunset. We also have a viewer with a panoramic view of this picture. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : The mysterious Stone Age Sanctuary in Saxony-Anhalt / Rätselhaftes Heiligtum aus der Steinzeit in Sachsen-Anhalt. Ringheiligtum Pömmelte Image copyright: LostPlacesMagdeburg, hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : Ring sanctuary / Ringheiligtum Pömmelte Die Kreisgrabenanlage von Pömmelte in Zackmünde, einem Ortsteil der Stadt Barby im Salzlandkreis in Sachsen-Anhalt ist ein ritueller Ort, die auf das Ende des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr. datiert wird. Sie wurde ebenso wie die Kreisgrabenanlage von Schönebeck (im Salzlandkreis) durch Flugprospektion entdeckt. 2005/2006 fanden geomagnetische Untersuchungen sta...

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by CharcoalBurner89 : November 5, 2022

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : nested areas

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : the outer ring

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : Steles in inner area.

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : Decorations at entrance gates.

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Klingon : Places where something was found are marked.

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Creative Commons : Model of the spatial organisation of the Pömmelte enclosure (designed by André Spatzier). (1 comment)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Creative_Commons : Layers of meaning of the Pömmelte enclosure as deduced from the archaeological record (design by André Spatzier). (2 comments)

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : Im Kreisgraben fanden sich unregelmäßig verteilt so genannte Schachtgruben, die vermutlich einen röhren- oder zylinderförmigen Innenausbau aufwiesen, der möglicherweise aus Korbgeflecht bestand. In der Regel wurden die Schachtgruben bald nach ihrem Ausheben, nachdem man im Rahmen ritueller Handlungen Gegenstände in ihnen deponiert hatte, verfüllt. Am Grund der Gruben fanden sich vor allem s...

Pömmelte Kultstätte
Pömmelte Kultstätte submitted by Flickr : Ringheiligtum Pömmelte Image copyright: LostPlacesMagdeburg, hosted on Flickr and displayed under the terms of their API.

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 1.3km NW 319° Kreisgrabenanlage Schönebeck* Henge
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"Pömmelte Kultstätte" | Login/Create an Account | 8 News and Comments
  
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First Assessment At The End Of The Excavation Work At The Pömmelte Ring Sanctuary by Andy B on Monday, 29 August 2022
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First Assessment At The End Of The Excavation Work At The Pömmelte Ring Sanctuary
AUGUST 24, 2022

In September 2022, the site work around the ring sanctuary Pömmelte, the ›German Stonehenge‹ on the Elbe, will be completed for the time being. After the complete excavation and reconstruction of the more than 4,000-year-old ring sanctuary, archaeologists focused on researching the surroundings of this fascinating and important prehistoric monument. After the last five successful years of excavation work and a total of more than 10,000 findings, an initial balance can be drawn.

Since the discovery in the aerial photograph and the start of the excavation work in 2005, an area of ​​133,600 square meters has been archaeologically examined in and around the ring sanctuaries of Pömmelte and Schönebeck (both Salzlandkreis). The largest part was accounted for by the research project 'Research into the ritual landscape around Pömmelte' initiated in 2018, whose annual excavation campaigns were generously funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) and the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Over the years, students from the Universities of Halle (MLU) and Southampton as well as prospective archaeologists from Leiden and Leipzig have been involved in the field work. Numerous scientists from other disciplines support the excavation team with the geological survey (Saxony-Anhalt State Office for Geology and Mining),

At the beginning of this year's campaign, the last quarter of the neighboring ring sanctuary in Schönebeck, which was left in the ground in 2011, was examined in interdisciplinary field work. This means that the field work on this area has also been completed for the time being.

The spectacular and often unexpected findings of recent years represent a valuable basis for further scientific research into a key region of Central European prehistory.

Rough translation continues:
https://archlsa-de.translate.goog/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/presseinformationen/2022/24822-poemmelte.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Original:
https://archlsa.de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/presseinformationen/2022/24822-poemmelte.html
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Pömmelte Kultstätte Forum Discussion by Runemage on Wednesday, 24 March 2021
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https://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=8602&forum=1

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Pömmelte Kultstätte - Stonehenge's Continental Cousin by Andy B on Thursday, 10 December 2020
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A 4,000-year-old ringed sanctuary reveals a German village’s surprising connections with Britain

In the middle of a potato field not far from the small village of Pömmelte in central Germany, University of Halle archaeologist Franziska Knoll unrolls a five-foot-long piece of paper and tapes it to the graffiti-streaked side of a shipping container full of recently excavated artifacts. A set of concentric circles fills one corner of the paper. Under that, dozens of rectangles, all oriented in the same direction, march along the length of the page. The blueprint is the fruit of three years of excavation that has involved everything from earthmoving equipment to tweezers. The dig’s scale is hard to fathom. In 2020 alone, a 15-person team from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt excavated more than six acres, in trenches as long as several football fields laid end to end.

Knoll has to raise her voice to talk over the rumbling of a 28-ton Caterpillar 323 excavator carving a new trench nearby. The rectangles on the paper, she explains, represent the outlines of dozens of houses, traces of a settlement that thrived here at the dawn of the Bronze Age. The circles represent the remains of a large wooden sanctuary that was built at the same time as the neighboring village. “It’s the largest Early Bronze Age settlement we know of in Central Europe,” Knoll says. “We’ve found sixty-five houses so far. This must have been a really significant place.”

The excavator’s operator maneuvers the machine’s metal bucket to scrape away a foot or so of dirt at a time while one of Knoll’s team members in a hard hat and steel-toed boots keeps a close eye on the soil. He is looking for dark patches that contrast against the light-brown soil—the decomposed remnants of wood posts sunk into the earth more than 4,000 years ago. When he spots one, he marks the posthole with a metal spike and fluorescent pink spray paint so it can be precisely mapped and, later, carefully excavated.

Unspectacular as the postholes at Pömmelte may appear, their discovery has the potential to resonate far beyond central Germany. The results of excavations here over the last 15 years suggest that the site is closely linked to Stonehenge. Knoll argues that Stonehenge and Pömmelte, or, as she calls it, Woodhenge, are in fact siblings. She thinks the wooden structure may perhaps even have been built by people who had visited the better-known British monument. Hers is a view of Europe’s distant past that wouldn’t have been possible 30 years ago.

Read More at
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/411-2101/letter-from/9295-germany-woodhenge
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Pömmelte - a monumental, multi-layered metaphor of the late third millenium BC by Andy B on Friday, 13 July 2018
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The ring sanctuary of Pömmelte, Germany: a monumental, multi-layered metaphor of the late third millennium BC, André Spatzier and François Bertemes

Religion, social identity and social formation processes are topics of great interest to the archaeological community. Regarding the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments of Central Europe, evidence from recent excavations at the Pömmelte enclosure in Central Germany suggests that circular or henge-like enclosures were monumental sanctuaries that served as venues for communal gatherings, ritual activities and performance. We suggest that such enclosures represent complex metaphors, possibly representing cosmological geographies, and that they also played important roles as communal structures in local identity formation and social regulation.

The Nebra sky disc is a find of global importance. Its iconography implies intensive observation of the sky and knowledge of complex astronomical phenomena (Meller 2010). The location and context of the disc's deposition in eastern Germany provide insights into the ritual activities of political and cultic authority in the Central European Early Bronze Age.

In this region, some 2000 years before, in the early fifth millennium BC, we find the so-called Kreisgrabenanlagen. These circular enclosures, commonly 40–120m in diameter, are defined by ditches with two to four entrances. Based on their layout and the astronomical alignment of their entrances, they have been widely interpreted as sanctuaries (Petrasch 2012: 60–63).

The term Kreisgrabenanlagen is, however, misleading, as those monuments also frequently feature concentric rings of pits and posts. In recent decades, evidence has accumulated for comparable enclosures of later dates, including the Early Bronze Age Únětice Culture between 2200 and 1600 BC, and thus into the chronological and cultural context of the Nebra sky disc.

Based on the analysis of one of these enclosure sites, recently excavated at Pömmelte on the flood plain of the Elbe River near Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, and dating to the late third millennium BC (Spatzier 2017a; Figure 1), this paper offers new insights into the complex and primarily sacred significance of such monuments within Bronze Age society.

The circular enclosure of Pömmelte is the first Central European monumental complex of primarily sacred importance that has been excavated and studied in detail. It reveals aspects of society and belief during the transition from the Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, in the second half of the third millennium BC. Furthermore, it offers details of ritual behaviour and the way that people organised their landscape. A sacred interior was separated from the profane environment, and served as a venue for rites that secured the continuity of the social, spiritual and cosmic order.

Ancestor worship formed another integral part of this: a mound-covered burial hut and a square-shaped ditch sanctuary —dating to 2880–2580 cal BC and attributed to the Corded Ware Culture—suggest that this site was deliberately chosen. With construction of the ring sanctuary, this place gained an immense expansion in meaning—comparable to Stonehenge. Through architectural transformation, both of these sites developed into sanctuaries with increasingly complex religious functions, including in relation to the cult of the dead. The cosmological and social functions, and the powerful symbolism of the Nebra sky disc and hoard (Meller 2010: 59–70), are reflected in Pömmelte's monumental architecture.

The henge monuments of the British Isles are generally considered to represent a uniquely British phenomenon, unrelated to Continental Europe; this position should now be reconsidered.

Read more in Antiquity

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Re: Pömmelte Kultstätte by KaiHofmann on Tuesday, 21 June 2016
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Now the Reconstruction of the site is open for the public.
Here is the link to the news at Spiegel Online (in German):
This is a link to the news
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Re: Pömmelte Kultstätte by Andy B on Tuesday, 12 August 2008
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Archaeologists have discovered traces of a Bronze Age place of worship in Germany in what they say might be the country's answer to Stonehenge.

Scientists from a university in Halle are excavating a roughly 4,000 year-old circular site in eastern Germany which contains graves that bear a strong resemblance to Stonehenge, a prehistoric stone circle of towering megaliths in southern Britain.

"It is the first finding of this kind on the European mainland which we have been able to fully excavate and which shows a structure we have until now only seen in Britain," Andre Spatzier, head of the excavation team, told Reuters TV.

He thinks rituals and ceremonies took place at the site, possibly even sacrifices.

"The way it is built, with many concentrated rings of graves, walls, palisades and pillars are very similar to the British monument at Stonehenge," added Spatzier.

The site, near the town of Poemmelte, was discovered through aerial photos which showed the formation of the graves in a ring with a diameter of about 80 meters (yards).

One difference to Stonehenge, however, is that the remains are made out of wood rather than stone. [Erm, not very much 'like Stonehenge' then eh? - MegP Ed]

More, with a photo at Reuters
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