The Golden Hat of Schifferstadt () was discovered in a field near the town of

Schifferstadt Schifferstadt (; , ''Schiffaschdad'', or ''Schiwwerschdadt'') is a town in the Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. If not including Ludwigshafen (the district free city that is the capital of Rhein-Pfalz-Kreis), Schifferstadt is t ...

in Southwest

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

in 1835. It is a

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

artefact made of thin sheet gold and served as the external decoration of a head-dress, probably of an organic material, with a brim and a chin-strap. The hat is on display in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in

Speyer Speyer (, older spelling ; ; ), historically known in English as Spires, is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in the western part of the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the r ...

. It is one of a group of four similar artifacts known as the

Golden hats Golden hats (or gold hats) (, singular: ) are a very specific and rare type of archaeological artifact from Bronze Age Europe. So far, four such objects ("cone-shaped gold hats of the Schifferstadt type") are known. The objects are made of thin ...

, all cone-shaped Bronze Age head-dresses made of sheet gold.

Cultural context

The Schifferstadt specimen is the oldest of the group of four known

and was the first to be discovered. After the example from Berlin, it is the best-preserved one, fully preserved with the exception of a small part of the brim. Three associated bronze axes and a comparison with other Late Bronze Age metalwork date the Schifferstadt Hat to ''circa'' 1,400-1,300 BC. The hat, like its counterparts, is assumed to have served as a religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun-cult common in Bronze Age Europe. The hats are also suggested to have served calendrical functions.

Description

The Schifferstadt Hat is a gold cone weighing . It is subdivided into horizontal ornamental bands, applied in the repoussé technique, with a blunt, undecorated tip. The shaft is short and squat, with a distinct widening and a wide brim at the bottom. The hat is 29.6 cm high and has a lower diameter of about 18 cm. The brim is 4.5 cm wide. At its base, the gold sheet was wound around a copper wire (now lost) for extra stability. Along its whole length the hat is subdivided and decorated by rows of horizontal symbols and bands. Five different stamps and a chisel or liner were used to create the horizontal bands of repeated stamped symbols, following a systematic scheme. The optical separation of the individual ornamental bands was achieved by ring ribs or bands around the whole external face of the hat. The symbols in the bands are mostly disk and circle motifs, usually with an internal disk or buckle, surrounded by up to six concentric circles. Striking are two bands with eye-like motifs, resembling similar symbols on the hats of Ezelsdorf and

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. Unlike the other known examples, the cone's top is not decorated with a star but left entirely unembellished. The illustration shows the scheme of the shape and composition of the hat, as well as number of ornamental zones and of the number of stamps used for each.

Provenance and find history

The Golden Hat of Schifferstadt was discovered on 29 April 1835, during agricultural work in a field named ''Reuschlache'', one km north of

. On the following day the find was handed to officials at

, then part of the

Kingdom of Bavaria The Kingdom of Bavaria ( ; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1806 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingd ...

. The known circumstances suggest a cult-related deposition: The hat was buried upright, about 60 cm deep. Its top reached to just below the ground surface. When found, the hat stood on a slab of back-burnt

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

. It was filled with earth or an earth-ashes mixture, of which nothing remains. The clay slab, which crumbled during its recovery and is now entirely lost, sat on a one-inch layer of sand, placed in a rectangular pit. Three bronze axes were leaning against the cone.

Manufacture

The hat is hammered from a single piece of gold

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metal, metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have prop ...

of 86.37%

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

, 13%

Silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

, 0.56%

Copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

and 0.07%

Tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

. Its average thickness is 0.2 to 0.25 cm, except the brim, which is far thinner, at 0.08 to 0.13 mm. The latter may suggest that it had been re-worked at some stage. If the amount of gold used for the hat was moulded into a square bar, it would only measure 2.5 cm square. Such a bar or lump was hammered to the thickness of a modern sheet of printing paper during its production. Because of the

tribological Tribology is the science and engineering of understanding friction, lubrication and wear phenomena for interacting surfaces in relative motion. It is highly interdisciplinary, drawing on many academic fields, including physics, chemistry, material ...

characteristics of the material, it tends to harden with increasing deformation (see

ductility Ductility refers to the ability of a material to sustain significant plastic Deformation (engineering), deformation before fracture. Plastic deformation is the permanent distortion of a material under applied stress, as opposed to elastic def ...

), increasing its potential to crack. To avoid cracking, an extremely even deformation was necessary. Additionally, the material had to be softened by repeatedly heating it to a temperature of at least 750 °C (1,382 °F). Since gold alloy has a relatively low

melting point The melting point (or, rarely, liquefaction point) of a substance is the temperature at which it changes state of matter, state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase (matter), phase exist in Thermodynamic equilib ...

of ''circa'' 960 °C (1,764 °F), a very careful

temperature control Temperature control is a process in which change of temperature of a space (and objects collectively there within), or of a substance, is measured or otherwise detected, and the passage of heat energy into or out of the space or substance is ad ...

and an isothermal heating process were required, so as to avoid melting any of the surface. For this, the Bronze Age artisans used a charcoal fire or oven similar to those used for

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

. The temperature could only be controlled through the addition of

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

, using a

bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtig ...

. In the course of its further manufacture, the hat was embellished with rows of radial ornamental bands, chased into the metal. To make this possible, it was filled with a

putty PuTTY () is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw socket connection. It can also connect to a se ...

or pitch based on tree resin and

wax Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to give lo ...

, traces of which have survived. The thin gold leaf was structured by chasing: stamp-like tools or moulds depicting the individual symbols were repeatedly pressed into (or rolled along) the exterior of the gold.

Bibliography

#''Gold und Kult der Bronzezeit''. (Ausstellungskatalog). Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg 2003. #Wilfried Menghin (ed.): ''Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica.'' Unze, Potsdam 32.2000, S. 31-108. #Peter Schauer: ''Die Goldblechkegel der Bronzezeit – Ein Beitrag zur Kulturverbindung zwischen Orient und Mitteleuropa.'' Habelt, Bonn 1986. #Gerhard Bott (Hrsg.): ''Der Goldblechkegel von Ezelsdorf.'' (Ausstellungskatalog). Theiß, Stuttgart 1983. #Mark Schmidt: ''Von Hüten, Kegeln und Kalendern oder Das blendende Licht des Orients.'' in: ''Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift.'' Berlin 43.2002, p. 499-541. #Ernst Probst: ''Deutschland in der Bronzezeit. Bauern, Bronzegießer und Burgherren zwischen Nordsee und Alpen.'' München 1999.

External links

On Schifferstadt town website

Historisches Museum der Pfalz
{{coord, 49.4000, N, 8.3664, E, source:wikidata, display=title