Early European Cultures

Swifterbant Culture (Mesolithic / Neolithic Farmers) (Western Europe)
c.5300 - 3400 BC

The crossover between the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Europe (and more specifically Northern Europe) took place about a millennium after the wide-ranging Magdalenian had faded. The later Swiderian culture faded around 8200 BC, but by then the Maglemosian had already emerged across areas of northern and Central Europe.

That culture concluded as the North Sea finished swallowing Doggerland (see feature link). The Kongemose succeeded the Maglemosian in Denmark and part of Sweden, while the Janislavice continued on its eastern flank. In Western Europe it was the Swifterbant culture which eventually emerged in the north-western area of the Low Countries.

Small groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers already had seasonally occupied the wetlands in what are now the Low Countries and northern Germany during the early Mesolithic around 6500 BC. The earliest evidence of more permanent human activity in the northern Low Countries comes from the late Mesolithic, around 5600 BC. Relatively large swings in the regional climate and frequent flooding for once did not force them out of the region.

These Mesolithic groups were very much of a type with those of the coastal Ertebølle culture which emerged around 5400 BC somewhat farther to the east in northern Germany and also in Denmark. Both cultures include a degree of sub-Neolithic semi-agricultural development by indigenous Mesolithic foraging groups. Between about 5300-4600 BC the people of the Swifterbant very gradually adapted to the new Neolithic Farmer way of life, adopting its methodology over the course of around seven hundred years.

In small degrees at a time they changed their highly mobile lifestyle by more continuously settling on fertile natural river levees, and by temporarily using 'donks' (river dunes) for seasonal hunting, fishing, and some herding. The culture itself is named for its type-site, a small village in the modern Dutch province of Flevoland. The process was driven entirely by internal dynamics - farming was not forced upon them by incoming settlers.

Crucially this was not a quick and full handover of the 'Neolithic package'. A complete transition to agriculture, land cultivation, and animal husbandry was never made during the culture's existence. Instead, both foraging and farming lifestyles coexisted.

Their habitat as hunter-gatherers was in wetlands and river deltas, generally to the north of the Linear Pottery Culture zone (often referred to as the LBK), in a region between the Scheldt delta in north-western Belgium and the Elbe in north-western Germany.

The Swifterbant culture can be subdivided into three phases, based primarily on developments in pottery characteristics. From a seasonal mobile lifestyle with only hunting, fishing, and gathering, and also indigenous pottery production in the early phase, the culture also evolved into one which practise agriculture in the middle phase, with the earliest evidence in Northern Europe for crop cultivation. The late phase was the final stage of the long transition into a Neolithic society, but was restricted to the north-western inland zone.

The Swifterbant can also be divided into two distinct geographical branches, one of which can be referred to as the north-western branch. This contains the highest density of cultural sites, being located in the Dutch provinces of Drenthe, Flevoland, Utrecht, and North Holland, and also in parts of Lower Saxony.

The other Swifterbant branch was the south-western one, spread across the Dutch province of South Holland and the river deltas, the Scheldt basin of north-western Belgium in Doel near Antwerp, and in the Land of Waas.

The Swifterbant's emergence and gradual development was triggered by extreme climate shifts in the sixth millennium BC, and by sea level rises which resulted in frequent flooding towards this ending of the post-ice age warming period. The culture's unique characteristics originated as a direct response to living in this unstable environment.

Crop-growing and cattle-herding were limited in scale, and occupation in the early phase was not year-round. Temporary seasonal camps were a deliberate choice which was made in reaction to the uncertainty of the surroundings, being installed on river dunes and offering attractive ecological conditions for seasonal hunting, fishing, and some herding.

Archaeology has been found at sites which now sit around five or six metres below sea level, both in wetland and upland locations in the form of natural levees and sandy river dunes which had been covered by dense vegetation. In addition to attractive circumstances for hunting and gathering, these locations later also offered optimised conditions for cattle and the small-scale cultivation of crops.

Over time, the Swifterbanters settled on the levees with increasing permanence, whilst still maintaining their seasonal hunting and fishing camps along the river dunes. Their material culture is characterised by a specific pottery style, along with stone and bone tools (harpoons) and distinctive burial customs.

Although an indigenous development, the culture was still shaped by other cultures. In the north-western area this was the aforementioned Ertebølle culture with which the people of the Swifterbant shared many similarities. The earliest artefacts which can be linked to the Swifterbant are almost indistinguishable from those of the Ertebølle.

Several cultural features were transmitted across the entire Swifterbant region through contact with and trade via the south-western Swifterbant region with neighbouring agro-pastoral culture communities from the loess area of Central Europe. These include the LBK, the BVSG, the post-LBK late Rössen culture, and the subsequent Michelsberg culture, all of which contributed to pottery styles along with agricultural and cattle farming knowledge and the acquisition of high-quality tools.

Burial habits included both individual and multiple inhumations with very few grave goods. The deceased were typically laid on their backs with arms and legs outstretched, as in the Ertebølle culture. Scattered bones such as skull fragments which have been found amongst settlement debris suggest the presence of ancestral rituals and deliberate burials in which only part of the remains were buried in order to represent an entire individual.

It was gradual flooding of the area which finally drove out the population towards the culture's last centuries. Rising peat and clay levels created a cycle of poor drainage to make the land increasingly uninhabitable by about 3700 BC.

The south-western section of the Swifterbant evolved into the Hazendonk 3 while, in the north-west, the reduced Swifterbant limped along. By about 3400 BC even the north-west area could no longer support settlement. Late Swifterbant culture in its almost-fully-agrarian area easily merged directly into the western branch of the broader Funnelbeaker culture.

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