Discovery
The disk, two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel and fragments of spiral bracelets were discovered by Henry Westphal and Mario Renner while treasure hunting with a metal detector in 1999. Archaeological artifacts are the property of the state in Saxony-Anhalt and the hunters were operating without a license and knew their activities constituted looting. They damaged the disk by their spade and destroyed parts of the site. Already the next day, Westphal and Renner sold the entire hoard for 31,000 DM to a dealer in Cologne. The hoard exchanged hands throughout Germany over the next two years, being sold for up to a million DM. By 2001 knowledge of its existence became public. In February 2002 the state archaeologist Harald Meller acquired the disk in a police-led sting operation in Basel from a couple who had put it on the black market for 700,000 DM. The looters were eventually traced back. In a plea bargain, they led police and archaeologists to the discovery site. Archaeologists have opened a dig at the site and have uncovered evidence that support the looters' claim in the form of traces of bronze artefacts in the ground, as well as matching earth samples found sticking to the artifacts. The disk and its accompanying finds are now in Halle in the State Museum of Prehistory. The two looters received a four months and a ten months sentence by a Naumburg court in September 2003. They went into appeal, but the appeal court raised their sentence to six and twelve months, respectively.
The discovery site is a prehistoric enclosure encircling the top of a 252 metres (827 ft) elevation in the Ziegelroda Forest, known as Mittelberg ("central hill"), some 60 km west of Leipzig. The surrounding area is known to have been settled since the Neolithic, and Ziegelroda Forest is said to contain around 1,000 barrows.
The enclosure is oriented in such a way that the sun seems to set every solstice behind the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz mountains, some 80 km to the north-west. It was claimed by the treasure-hunters that the artefacts were discovered within a pit inside the bank-and-ditch enclosure.
The significance of the site to prehistoric dwellers is underlined by the proximity to the much older Goseck circle.
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