Every ceramist has to get to know his roots, in Western and Central Europe that is the linear pottery (LBK from German: Linearbandkeramik). This Neolithic pottery is over 7,000 years old. They are the oldest pots found in the Netherlands.
Where were these archeological treasures discovered? In the southernmost tip of our country, the fertile loess soils of South Limburg, including Elsloo and Stein. For the first farmers and potters in the Netherlands it was a good place to be. And for today’s ceramists, it still is…
So this summer we went to smell the Linear Pottery culture… and to taste cherry pie in South Limburg.
Linear pottery in Elsloo and Stein
“The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing c. 5500–4500 BC. It is abbreviated as LBK (from German: Linearbandkeramik), and is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics or Incised Ware culture.”
In Elsloo, Limburg, the largest settlement of these “Linear band ceramists” in the Netherlands was discovered in the middle of the last century. But traces of these farmers and potters have also been found elsewhere in South Limburg.
In short, where better to see the lineaire pottery with your own eyes than in the archaeology museum in the adjacent village: Stein. This unique “Museum of Burial Culture” is built over a burial chamber from the Stone Age, dated 3400 BCE.
Museum of Burial Culture in Stein
Admittedly 2000 years after the “Linear Potters” made their earthenware pots from loess (also called Limburg clay). Still impressive to come face to face with our prehistoric ancestors so directly. The burial chamber still looks the same as it was discovered in 1963. It seemed as if I had uncovered the crypt myself.
If you walk past the burial chamber, you enter the exhibition space where a small part of the archaeological finds from Elsloo, Stein and surroundings are exhibited. The collection includes Stone Age linear pottery, but also urns from the late Bronze Age, Roman terra sigillata and early Middle Ages ceramics of the Franks.
It is overwhelming to see more than 5000 years of ceramics tradition side by side. At the place where it was made, used and excavated thousands of years later!
For a ceramic addict like me, the best place to let these unique earthenware finds sink in. The Linear Pottery can be recognized by the symmetrical “bands” carved into the clay. The pottery from later periods also have their unique style characteristics.
Ceramics connect people with history, life and death
Why exhibit pottery in a grave culture museum? Because these ceramic objects have been found in burial fields, crypts and other places where people have laid their dead to rest. Some pottery was donated to the deceased, which they had used during their lifetime. Other ceramic objects, such as urns, were made especially for the dead as a final resting place.
When you see these pots, which span the ceramics tradition of thousands of years, standing side by side, it is hard to imagine that these forms have remained essentially unchanged. The production, firing and finishing techniques have changed. Decoration and styles changed, but the function has remained the same.
Even today’s ceramic “container shapes” are still for everyday use, to celebrate life, to remember our dead and to give our mortality a place.
Humans have a special bond with with pottery since prehistoric times. Linear Pottery shows this beautiful line to our past, present and future!
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