Kreisgrabenanlage Dresden-Nickern

In the Gebergrund area of Dresden's Nickern district, the Kreisgrabenanlage Dresden-Nickern preserves at least four prehistoric circular enclosures. They are the work of the early bandkeramic culture, which existed between 5500 and 4500 BCE. Excavations ahead of a motorway feeder road brought the first of the circles to light. Four of them inside a single kilometre make the site a rarity in Europe.

Several excavation areas, labelled DD-02, DD-98, NIE-07 and NIE-09, each reveal a different piece of the complex. DD-02, excavated in 1993, holds a circle fifty metres across. DD-98, another simple circle found in 1998, reaches eighty metres. NIE-07, discovered in 2002, shows two segment arcs of a double ditch enclosure, its maximum diameter reaching 140 metres. NIE-09, also from 2002, carries four concentric ditches with diameters between seventy and 126 metres. Inside them stand two palisade rings enclosing roughly 1,140 square metres.

The Nickern circles belong to a Central European network of about 150 similar structures, built between 4800 and 4600 BCE. After them, nothing on that scale appears again until the Bronze Age, three thousand years later. Their purpose remains open to debate: theories run from fortifications and marketplaces to calendars or temples. The finds, among them ceramic figures and tools of stone, bone and wood, open a window on the early bandkeramic culture. The site forms a stop on the Archaeo-Pfad Dresden, a cultural-historical trail of archaeological discoveries in the area. A model of the settlement in the State Museum of Archaeology in Chemnitz lets you picture the circles as they stood.