Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Bush Barrow" in English language version.
Ker and his colleagues found the pair of acute angles of the basic diamond pattern [of the Bush Barrow lozenge] to be 81°. They realized that this was the angle between midsummer and midwinter sunrises (and sunsets of course) on a low horizon at the latitude of Stonehenge (51.17° N) four thousand years ago.
The Nebra disc and the Bush Barrow lozenge both seem to be designed to reflect the annual solar cycle at about latitude 51 degrees north, and both have elements in their design which could refer specifically to the solar calendar.
Megalithic-style linear motifs – including chevrons and lozenges – reappeared in the earliest Bronze Age, when they are found on British long-necked beakers from single burials and are also characteristic of the most prestigious metalwork, namely Irish gold lunulae. These motifs – or better 'symbols' – continued into the time of the Wessex Culture, when they made their appearance in the shape and decoration of the prestigious Bush Barrow and Clandon breastplates and the gold-nail inlay of the Bush Barrow hilt and its associated bone mounts. … The survival of these motifs or symbols associated with burials, rituals and elites must indicate a continuation of some Megalithic traditions, beliefs and cult practices into the Early Bronze Age.
Megalithic-style linear motifs – including chevrons and lozenges – reappeared in the earliest Bronze Age, when they are found on British long-necked beakers from single burials and are also characteristic of the most prestigious metalwork, namely Irish gold lunulae. These motifs – or better 'symbols' – continued into the time of the Wessex Culture, when they made their appearance in the shape and decoration of the prestigious Bush Barrow and Clandon breastplates and the gold-nail inlay of the Bush Barrow hilt and its associated bone mounts. … The survival of these motifs or symbols associated with burials, rituals and elites must indicate a continuation of some Megalithic traditions, beliefs and cult practices into the Early Bronze Age.
5000 years ago understanding of the solar calendar and the intricate movements of the moon over its 18.61-year cycle were already well understood and the new circular site on Salisbury plan [Stonehenge] was designed to record this basic data in an ingenious design based on Pythagorean triangles.
It is difficult to date the chevron-shaped bone or ivory mount from the Spanish coast near Alicante, because its find-circumstances have not been recorded. Brandherm (1996, 51) connects it with the northern province of the El Argar Culture. Its Mycenaean parallels come from Shaft Grave Iota, circle B, which contained pottery of Middle Helladic type and should mark the very beginning of the Shaft Grave series, presumably dating to the 17th century BC and probably slightly later than the comparable pieces from Bush Barrow with which they are traditionally connected.
the Bush Barrow bone chevrons have third-millennium sheet-gold prototypes from Breton megalithic tombs.
The traditional contact finds between Wessex and Mycenae, i.e. the gold-pin decoration of the Bush Barrow and Breton dagger hafts and the Bush Barrow zig-zag bone mounts of the earlier second millennium, all have their roots in the west, where some can be traced back to the Copper Age. Their appearance in the Mediterranean, however, cannot as yet be dated before the earliest Shaft Graves of Grave circle B of the end of the Middle Helladic Bronze Age and its transition to the Late, a period now assigned to the 17th century BC or earlier.
In Greece, amber objects first make their appearance in the seventeenth or sixteenth centuries BCE at the very beginning of the Mycenaean period. ... the amber objects had not reached Greece from the Baltic, but, mostly as finished products, from the area of the Wessex culture of southern England. ... The transmission of amber objects from the Wessex culture to Greece during the LH I phase predates the earliest appearance of components of amber necklaces, including spacer plates, in graves of the Tumulus Burial culture.
Much, even if not all, of the amber that found its way to the Greek mainland in the early part of the Late Bronze Age seems to have been imported as finished necklaces of the crescentic or lunate type associated with the Early Bronze Age Wessex culture in south-central Britain. Rectangular spacer plates and trapezoid end pieces of the same type as those found in Britain have been found at Mycenae in the Argolid and at Pylos and Kakovatos in Messenia. ... The crescentic amber necklaces found in Britain are similar in shape to the gold collars known as lunulae and are believed to have had the same symbolic meaning.
while in the Early Bronze Age in the British Isles amber is by no means confined to elite tombs, special forms like crescentic amber necklaces with spacer plates and trapezoid end-pieces remain restricted to the richest Wessex burials. This exactly corresponds to the find situation of amber jewellery with spacer plates in the Early Mycenaean Peloponnese, thus emphasizing that in both regions such special amber objects were confined to the very small group of the most richly furnished burials.
In this paper we examine a demanding gold-working technique, which was used for the decoration of prestigious weapons in two distant parts of Bronze Age Europe: a) EBA Armorique and Southern England (Wessex culture) and b) Mycenaean Greece.
Over a hundred years ago Reinecke (1902b) compared the gold-pin inlay of the Bush Barrow and Breton dagger hilts with similarly decorated hafts from the Mycenaean Shaft Graves. ... the western hilts are still the best parallels for the Mycenaean examples. As demonstrated by Sakellariou (1984) gold-pin decoration is foreign to the Aegean prior the Shaft Grave period and its origin must, therefore, be sought in the Atlantic West.
some forms from graves of the Wessex culture found their way into Mycenae, either as originals or copies. These pieces have no precedents or comparisons in the rest of the Mediterranean and must be attributed to Atlantic models or direct imports. The most convincing and also best known examples are the lunula-shaped amber collars from contexts of the Wessex culture and from the shaft graves … Further evidence of the radiation from Wessex to Mycenae is the similarity of the dagger or sword handles decorated with gold nails ... this singular technique has no antecedents in the Mediterranean, and its best parallels and precursors still come from Wessex and Brittany. Its chronology in Mycenae corresponds roughly to that of the amber necklaces discussed above … The bone zigzag fittings of a sceptre from Bush Barrow, also appear several times as a foreign form in Mycenae ... the origin of the zigzag-shaped Mycenaean fittings should also be sought in Atlantic Europe.(Translated from German)
This phase also includes the hoard of Nebra with its famous disc showing gold-plated heavenly bodies. Its plating technique is generally connected to Mycenaean metalwork. It will be shown, however, that this technique together with that of metal inlay had its origins in Britain, where it was already applied to organic material during the first phase of the Early Bronze Age, and flourished during the second and third phases when it was introduced on the continent and used on prestige metalwork.
The Bush Barrow lozenge shows that from the time of the construction of the first truly circular earthworks, ideas had progressed far beyond the geometry of circles to the understanding of the radii to create hexagons, the subdivision of angles, the setting out of accurate right angles and the investigation of other geometric forms including decagons and pentagons. … The sophisticated geometric design of the Bush Barrow lozenge can hardly have been a spontaneous product; the confidence of its execution proclaims it to be an evolved work based on long-established and well-practised procedures. (p.181-182) ... Both the Bush Barrow lozenges were based on hexagonal geometry. … The design of the Clandon Barrow lozenge is based on the ingenious use of a 10-sided polygon (decagon) which was then used to control the proportion and spacing of its concentric design (p.260-269)
The similarities [of the Clandon Barrow] with Bush Barrow in terms of content are remarkable: both mounds produced gold diamond-shaped plaques, both contained similar weapons, and both held extremely rare maces made from a range of exotic materials. The location of Clandon, close to the ancient ceremonial centre of Mount Pleasant, is also comparable to the privileged position of Bush Barrow near to Stonehenge.
it is an intriguing coincidence that the acute angles of the lozenge groove-bands are approximately 81°, which is effectively the difference between the two solstice alignments in the Stonehenge area.
Taking the Sky Disc to represent the 360 degrees of a full circle, both the gold arcs occupy a very precise angle of between 82 and 83 degrees ... The arcs mark the full range of points on the horizon at which the sun sets and rises in a solar year. The terminal of each arc inscribes the summer solstice sunrise and sunset and the winter solstice sunrise and sunset as seen from the latitude of the Mittelberg 3,600 years ago. ... The marking of solstice sunrise and sunset at monuments such as Stonehenge was about the expression of religious and symbolic ideas linking the monument to the cycles of the cosmos. The same concerns were probably true of the Sky Disc
By the time the sarsen structure was built at Stonehenge the surveyors had learnt to use quite complex hexagon-based constructions which involved not only the use of the radial string (to create a hexagon within a circle), but also the ability to use an axial line which formed the basis for the construction of a pentagon, the interspace between the hexagon and pentagon vertices providing the correct 30-hole spacing around the circumference. Not only is it apparent in the setting out of the stones, but also in the numbers contained within the finished arrays, where everything can be easily derived from the basic hexagon framework. In very simple terms, we have added to the tradition of square-and-circle survey the 'hexagon-and-circle' and its derivative – devices which are also clearly evident within the sophisticated geometry of the artifacts of the later Stonehenge period, particularly those found in the Bush Barrow.
the station stones at Stonehenge marked the corners of a rectangle whose side lengths were in the ratio 5:12, a Pythagorean combination yielding a diagonal of length thirteen units. The station stone rectangle is not cardinally oriented, but its shorter sides are themselves oriented upon midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the longer sides align roughly with an extreme rising position of the moon.
The [Bush Barrow] staff mounts resemble grave goods recovered from Mycenae - though there are also parallels in gold objects found in Brittany - and have provoked continuing debates as to whether the Wessex elite responsible for Bush Barrow were in some sort of contact with the Mycenaean culture of the Mediterranean.
the prototypes of the Mycenaean daggers might be found further north, perhaps in the region of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary; indeed, it is possible to speculate even further, and look to northwestern or central Europe. The metal-inlaying traditions on EBA daggers in Brittany (especially Priziac) and southern Britain, along with a series of inlaid and plated objects on non-metallic bases, illustrate an early knowledge of material combination procedures for bi- or polychromatic purposes in this region reaching back to the nineteenth/eighteenth century BC. All things considered, it is possible to suggest that the damascene technique used on the Thun axe is based on indigenous metal-inlaying traditions that developed north of the Alps and that this axe could itself have served as the prototype for later damascened objects in other regions. Nor can we entirely exclude the possibility that the double-damascening technique originated here and found its way to south-eastern Europe, where it was brought to a high technical and artistic level in the Mycenaean period.
Ker and his colleagues found the pair of acute angles of the basic diamond pattern [of the Bush Barrow lozenge] to be 81°. They realized that this was the angle between midsummer and midwinter sunrises (and sunsets of course) on a low horizon at the latitude of Stonehenge (51.17° N) four thousand years ago.
The Nebra disc and the Bush Barrow lozenge both seem to be designed to reflect the annual solar cycle at about latitude 51 degrees north, and both have elements in their design which could refer specifically to the solar calendar.
we propose that there is a direct link between the design of the monument of Stonehenge and the chalk artefacts known as the Folkton and Lavant Drums, in which the Drums represent measurement standards that were essential for accurate and reproducible monument construction. ... The diameters, and hence the circumferences, of these four drums form a mathematical harmonic sequence
5000 years ago understanding of the solar calendar and the intricate movements of the moon over its 18.61-year cycle were already well understood and the new circular site on Salisbury plan [Stonehenge] was designed to record this basic data in an ingenious design based on Pythagorean triangles.
the prototypes of the Mycenaean daggers might be found further north, perhaps in the region of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary; indeed, it is possible to speculate even further, and look to northwestern or central Europe. The metal-inlaying traditions on EBA daggers in Brittany (especially Priziac) and southern Britain, along with a series of inlaid and plated objects on non-metallic bases, illustrate an early knowledge of material combination procedures for bi- or polychromatic purposes in this region reaching back to the nineteenth/eighteenth century BC. All things considered, it is possible to suggest that the damascene technique used on the Thun axe is based on indigenous metal-inlaying traditions that developed north of the Alps and that this axe could itself have served as the prototype for later damascened objects in other regions. Nor can we entirely exclude the possibility that the double-damascening technique originated here and found its way to south-eastern Europe, where it was brought to a high technical and artistic level in the Mycenaean period.
lozenges are the mainstay of Neolithic art in Britain – from the forms found on Grooved ware artwork, synonymous with the henges, to the later Bush Barrow lozenge – but also common on megalithic petroglyphs and artefacts such as the Folkton drums.
Ker and his colleagues found the pair of acute angles of the basic diamond pattern [of the Bush Barrow lozenge] to be 81°. They realized that this was the angle between midsummer and midwinter sunrises (and sunsets of course) on a low horizon at the latitude of Stonehenge (51.17° N) four thousand years ago.
The Nebra disc and the Bush Barrow lozenge both seem to be designed to reflect the annual solar cycle at about latitude 51 degrees north, and both have elements in their design which could refer specifically to the solar calendar.
we propose that there is a direct link between the design of the monument of Stonehenge and the chalk artefacts known as the Folkton and Lavant Drums, in which the Drums represent measurement standards that were essential for accurate and reproducible monument construction. ... The diameters, and hence the circumferences, of these four drums form a mathematical harmonic sequence
the prototypes of the Mycenaean daggers might be found further north, perhaps in the region of Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary; indeed, it is possible to speculate even further, and look to northwestern or central Europe. The metal-inlaying traditions on EBA daggers in Brittany (especially Priziac) and southern Britain, along with a series of inlaid and plated objects on non-metallic bases, illustrate an early knowledge of material combination procedures for bi- or polychromatic purposes in this region reaching back to the nineteenth/eighteenth century BC. All things considered, it is possible to suggest that the damascene technique used on the Thun axe is based on indigenous metal-inlaying traditions that developed north of the Alps and that this axe could itself have served as the prototype for later damascened objects in other regions. Nor can we entirely exclude the possibility that the double-damascening technique originated here and found its way to south-eastern Europe, where it was brought to a high technical and artistic level in the Mycenaean period.
we propose that there is a direct link between the design of the monument of Stonehenge and the chalk artefacts known as the Folkton and Lavant Drums, in which the Drums represent measurement standards that were essential for accurate and reproducible monument construction. ... The diameters, and hence the circumferences, of these four drums form a mathematical harmonic sequence
The existence of these measuring devices implies an advanced knowledge in prehistoric Britain of geometry and of the mathematical properties of circles.
The existence of these measuring devices implies an advanced knowledge in prehistoric Britain of geometry and of the mathematical properties of circles.
The carefully laid out design of the lozenge shows a detailed knowledge of geometry. The sharpest angle is similar to that between the summer and winter solstice.
The point at the top and the bottom [of the Bush Barrow gold lozenge] has a very precise angle of 81 degrees. That's the same angle between where the sun rises at midwinter and midsummer solstices, so it has an astronomical importance. And the very finely detailed embossed decoration, particularly around the outer border, is laid out to a tolerance of less than half a millimetre. What that tells us is they understood astronomy, geometry and mathematics, 4,000 years ago.
