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The discovery site encircles the top of a hill that is still called the the Mittelberg ('Central Hill'), a 252m hill in the Ziegelroda Forest, 180km southwest of Berlin. The artifact was discovered within a pit inside a Bronze Age ringwall and trench. The ringwall was built in such a way that the sun seemed to disappear every equinox behind the Brocken, a local mountain already fabled as a Druidic site. The nearby forest contains 1000 barrow graves.
In Scientific American December 2003, the article "Archaeo - Astronomy: Circles for Space: German 'Stonehenge' marks oldest observatory" tells us that there is a 'vast shadowy circle in a flat wheatfield near Goseck, Germany.' We're told it dates back 7000 years, was first spotted from an airplane, that the circle is 75 metres wide. There were originally four concentric circles with a mound and a ditch. Three sets of gates stood southeast, southwest, and north. On the winter solstice, someone at the centre of the circles could see the sun rise and set through the southern gates. We're told there are 200 such circles across Europe, of which 20 have so far been excavated. Pottery remains - called sherds - suggest a date for earliest construction at the site of about 4900 BCE.
The disk and associated bronze spear points that help date the site ca 1600 BCE, were uncovered by grave-robbers working with a metal detector, and were being sold on the underground archaeological market when they were retrieved in a 'sting' operation.
The disk and its accompanying finds have come to rest in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte (State Museum for Prehistory') of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany,
Quantitative astronomy in central Europe may possibly date back 3600 years. Egyptian representations of the sky are purely schematic.
At once a scientific instrument and one of religious significance, the disk is patently one of the most beautiful Bronze Age objects, the blue-green patina of the bronze may have been part of the original artifact.
The disk has only just begun to attract the kind of speculation that hangs over Stonehenge.