MessageToEagle.com – An early Bronze Age sun-disc from Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire has gone on display for the first time. The sun-disc is : and also one of only six such finds.
The artifact – made in about 2,400 BC – was discovered in a burial mound at Monkton Farleigh, just 20 miles from Stonehenge.
It is believed that ‘Stonehenge sun-disc’ represents the sun and may have been worn on clothing or a head-dress.
It was found in 1947 in excavations by Guy Underwood along with a pottery beaker, flint arrowheads and fragments of the skeleton of an adult male.
Preserved by Dr Denis Whitehead since its discovery, the sun-disc was seen by the museum’s archaeologists the first time was when he brought it to the opening of the Prehistory Galleries in 2013.
The sun-disk is a thin embossed sheet of gold with a cross at the centre, surrounded by a circle. Between the lines of both the cross and the circle are fine dots which glint in sunlight.
The disc is pierced by two holes that may have been used to sew the disc to a piece of clothing or a head-dress, and may have been used in pairs.
Until recently it has been thought that early Bronze Age gold may have come from Ireland, but a new scientific technique developed at Southampton University is hinting that the gold may have come from Cornwall.
“We have the best Bronze Age collections in Britain and we are delighted to be able to display this incredibly rare sun-disk through the generosity of the donors,” Museum Director David Dawson said.
It has now been presented to the Museum in remembrance of Denis S Whitehead of Inwoods, Farleigh Wick.”
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