Golden hats (or gold hats) (German: 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 roughly 90 cm (35 in).
- 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, the context is entirely unknown. At least two of the known examples (Berlin and Schifferstadt) appear to have been deliberately and carefully buried in antiquity.[citation needed]
Although none can be dated precisely, their technology suggests that they were probably made between 1400–800 BC.