During the Late Neolithic or New Stone Age, the local farming community could gather in this round building. But this is only a guess – the true purpose of the find is unknown.

what is known

• The circle is quite wide – about 55 meters in diameter, or roughly the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• Builders were part of the Brushed Pottery culture that flourished between 4900 and 4400 BC.
• Researchers first learned of this structure’s existence in the 1980s, when construction workers were laying gas and water pipes, but current excavations have revealed it in its entirety for the first time.
• So far, a team of archaeologists pottery fragments, animal bones and stone tools found.
• Carbon dating of the organic remains at this site can help establish the date of construction and possibly link the structure to a Neolithic settlement discovered recently.

Jaroslav Rzydky, representative of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP) Institute of Archeology, says that people who make pottery from eggs are known for building temples in the Czech Bohemia region. Located at the intersection of present-day Poland, eastern Germany, and northern Bohemia, the settled farming villages consisted of several long, rectangular houses that housed 20 to 30 people each. But “knowledge about the construction of dance halls crossed the boundaries of various archaeological cultures.” Various communities in Central Europe built dance halls.

Open trenches are being excavated by a team from the Archaeological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences / Photo by IAP

Round dances: what is known about them

A few decades ago, very little was known about dances. But when aerial photography and drones became an important part of the archaeological toolkit, scientists realized they were the oldest architectural evidence in all of Europe.

• Seen from above, round houses consist of one or more wide, circular ditches with various openings that serve as entrances.
• The interior of each round house was probably lined with wooden posts, possibly with clay plaster between them.
• Hundreds of such circular earthen structures have been found in Central Europe. And while their popularity in the late Neolithic is clear, its function is still questioned.

Archaeologists work on excavations / Photo IAP

In 1991, a circular house of the same culture was found in Germany, with two entrances that coincide with sunrise and sunset during the winter and summer solstices. Therefore, one interpretation of the Gösek circle is that it functions as an observatory or a kind of calendar. Other researchers believe that such buildings combine several functions, the most important of which is socio-ritual. They were probably built for gatherings of large numbers of people, perhaps to commemorate events that were important to them as a community, such as rites of passage, astronomical phenomena, or economic exchange.

After three centuries of popularity, dances suddenly disappeared in 4600 BC.