Linear Pottery from Limburg (The Netherlands; ca. 5300 BC)
Around 7,500 years ago, the first farmers arrived in what is now southern Limburg. They belonged to the Linear Pottery (LBK) culture, named after the ribbon-like decorations on their pottery (Bandkeramik in German). These people didn’t just pass through—they settled, built long wooden houses, cultivated crops, and raised livestock on the fertile loess soils of the region.
Archaeological sites in Elsloo, Stein, and Sittard have revealed traces of their daily life: pottery, polished stone tools, and even burial grounds. In Stein, over 100 graves were uncovered, some with beautifully decorated ceramics and flint tools buried beside the deceased—signs of ritual, memory, and perhaps social status. These finds show that these early farmers lived in organized, permanent communities.
But Limburg was not an isolated case—it was part of a much wider transformation sweeping across Europe: the spread of farming. This neolithic revolution had begun millennia earlier in the Near East and moved slowly westward through Anatolia, the Balkans, and Central Europe. By the time the LBK people reached Limburg around 5300 BCE, farming was already well established in southeastern Europe.
In the Balkans and Greece, cultures like Starčevo and Sesklo had been practicing agriculture and building villages for centuries. Further north, in what is now Hungary and Austria, longhouse villages similar to those in Limburg had developed. In the Danube basin, the Vinča culture flourished, with large settlements and some of the earliest symbolic writing in Europe.
To the west and south, the Cardial and Impressa cultures spread farming along the Mediterranean coast—from Italy to southern France and Spain—marked by pottery decorated with shell and comb impressions. Around the same time, in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula, early farmers began to mix with local hunter-gatherers, forming new hybrid communities.
Meanwhile, much of northern and western Europe, including Britain, Scandinavia, and large parts of Germany and the Low Countries, was still occupied by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. In this context, Limburg was a frontier zone: the northernmost edge of the LBK expansion, where the new farming way of life first met older traditions of mobility and foraging.
The arrival of the LBK people in Limburg marks a turning point. They brought more than tools and seeds—they brought a new way of living that emphasized permanence, land ownership, and community. Their longhouses, field systems, and burial customs reflect a radical shift in how people related to the land, to each other, and to the past.
Further Reading
Bakels, C. C. (2003). The Early Neolithic of the Netherlands: Bandkeramik Farmers in the Low Countries. Antiquity, 77(296), 570–580.
Modderman, P. J. R. (1970). The Linear Pottery Culture: Diversity in Uniformity. Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek, 20–21, 63–70.
Louwe Kooijmans, L. P. (2005). Prehistory of the Netherlands. Amsterdam University Press.
Van de Velde, P. (1979). Bandkeramische nederzettingen in Limburg. Archeologische Berichten.
