Avanton Gold Cone

The gold foil cone of Avanton (fr: Cône d' Avanton, also Cône d'Or d' Avanton ) is a Bronze Age artifact and is made of thin gold sheet. He belongs to a group from four well-known cone- shaped gold hats from the Bronze Age, in the course of the 19th and 20th century in southern Germany ( Berlin Gold Hat, Golden Hat by Schiffer city, gold foil cone of Ezelsdorf book) and in France ( Cône d ' Avanton ) were found in varying states of preservation.

Description

The sheet-gold cone was excavated in 1844 during fieldwork in the vicinity of the village Avanton, about 12 kilometers north of Poitiers. The property was damaged; A comparison with other findings suggests that a part ( the edge ) is missing. The upper part of the golden hat is 55 cm long and weighs 285 g The cap with a brim is gone either lost in finding or article was buried fragmented. In form and ornamentation it resembles the gold foil cone of Ezelsdorf book, which also has a top formed from triangles star pattern.

The gold foil cone served as external decorative panel langschäftigen a headgear with a brim, which probably consisted of organic material and the outer, thin gold sheet stabilized. It is now believed that the gold hats served as religious insignia of gods and priests of a spread in the late Bronze Age in Central Europe sun cult. This view is supported by the pictorial representation of an interpreted object as a cone hat on a stone slab from the grave of Kivik in Skåne, southern Sweden, in clearly religious- cultic context. The Celtic tribe of Piktonen had his settlement area here.

The Cône d' Avanton is located in the Musée d' Archéologie Nationale at the castle of Saint- Germain -en- Laye, near Paris.