Golden hat
Their close similarities in symbolism and techniques of manufacture are testimony to a coherent Bronze Age culture over a wide-ranging territory in western and central Europe.
The cone-shaped golden hats of Schifferstadt type are assumed to be connected with a number of comparable cap or crown-shaped gold leaf objects from Ireland (Comerford Crown, discovered in 1692 and since lost) and the Atlantic coast of Spain (gold leaf crowns of Leiro and Axtroki), as well as various gold bowls (such as the Eberswalde Hoard), vessels, ornaments and diadems (such as the Velem diadem from Hungary) from across central and northern Europe.
According to Sperber (2003) the Schifferstadt-type conical gold hats may have originated from contact with Atlantic Bronze Age cultures.
[1] It is assumed that the golden hats served as religious insignia for the deities or priests of a sun cult then widespread in Central Europe.
[4][5][6] Their use as headgear is strongly supported by the fact that the three of four examples have a cap-like widening at the bottom of the cone, and that their openings are oval (not round), with diameters and shapes roughly equivalent to those of a human skull.
The figural depiction of an object resembling a conical hat on a stone slab of the King's Grave at Kivik, Southern Sweden, strongly supports their association with religion and cult, as does the fact that the known examples appear to have been deposited (buried) carefully.
[7] Attempts to decipher the golden hats' ornamentation suggest that their cultic role is accompanied or complemented by their use as complex calendrical devices.
A detailed study[8] of the Berlin example, which is fully preserved, claimed that the symbols possibly represent a lunisolar calendar.
Apart from ornament bands incorporating differing numbers of rings there are seemingly special symbols and zones in intercalary areas, which may have had to be added to or subtracted from the periods in question.
The system of this mathematical function incorporated into the artistic ornamentation has not been fully deciphered so far, but a schematic study of the Berlin Golden Hat and the periods it may delimit has been attempted.
(For example: To determine a 54 month cycle in the lunar system, the numerical values of the green or blue zones 3 to 21 are added, reaching a sum of 1,739 days.
The overall discrepancy of 2 days to the astronomically accurate value is probably the result of a slight imprecision in the Bronze Age observation of synodic and solar month.
To make this possible, they were probably filled with a putty or pitch based on tree resin and wax; in the Schifferstadt specimen, traces of this have survived.
