Golden hat
Golden hats (or gold hats) (Goldhüte, singular: Goldhut) are a very specific and rare type of archaeological artifact from Bronze Age Europe. So far, four such objects ("cone-shaped gold hats of the Schifferstadt type") are known. The objects are made of thin sheet gold and were attached externally to long conical and brimmed headdresses which were probably made of some organic material and served to stabilise the external gold leaf. The following conical golden hats are known : Avanton Gold Cone, incomplete, found at Avanton near Poitiers in 1844, c. 1400 BC. Golden Hat of Schifferstadt, found in 1835 at Schifferstadt near Speyer, c. 1400–1300 BC. Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch, found near Ezelsdorf near Nuremberg in 1953, c. 1000–900 BC; the tallest known specimen at c. 90 cm. Berlin Gold Hat, found probably in Swabia or Switzerland, c. 1000–800 BC; acquired by the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin, in 1996. The archaeological contexts of the cones are not very clear (for the Berlin specimen, it is entirely unknown). At least two of the known examples (Berlin and Schifferstadt) appear to have been deliberately and carefully buried in antiquity. Although none can be dated precisely, their technology suggests that they were probably made between 1400–800 BC. File:Neues Museum, Berlin 2017 100.jpg|Berlin, [[Neues Museum]] File:Cône d'Avanton, musée des Antiquités Nationales, 2010-03-26.jpg|Avanton, [[National Archaeological Museum, France]] File:Gold hat.jpg|Ezelsdorf-Buch, [[Germanisches Nationalmuseum|Germanisches National Museum]] File:Goldener hut schifferstadt hist mus speyer.jpg|Schifferstadt, [[Historical Museum of the Palatinate]] The hats are associated with the Bronze Age late Tumulus culture and Urnfield culture. 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. A comparable golden pectoral was found at Mold, Flintshire, in northern Wales, which is of somewhat earlier date.
