Michelsberg Culture

The third millenium marked for the Southern Low Countries the arrival of new wanderers, attracked by the recommendably rich quality of the local flint industries and reworking them in an industral fashion by deep mining of silex and trading activities , on which I will divulge in due time, introducing the Michelsberg Culture (MBK, 4400BC-3500BC), named after its type-site(a fortified settlement) by Untergrombach, Baden-Württenberg, foremost located along the Rhein River with offshoots unto Belgium and the Parisian Basin as well Central Germany and Bohemia.

The Flemish archaeologist S.J.De Laet regards them as acculturated mesolithics who for some unclear reason switched from agriculture to an expansive transhumance economy, while E.Vogt and C.J.Becker advocate a more concretized theory involving mesolithics merging in the eastern Central Europe with Danubians and Rössen and point to a close relationship between MBK and TRB (Trichterbecher or Funnel Beaker Culture), the latter clustering North Europe and MBK meanwhile covering Belgium, the Rhineland, the valleys of the Neckar till the Bodenmeer in Switzerland, J.Lüning searches the cradle of the MBK in the valleys of the Rhine, evolving from a later phase of Rössen, MBK was however higher north replaced by TRB, but in Central Germany both were co-existing.

Like Rössen the pottery is poor, if not abstinized in decoration, e.g. the Belgian group of MBK brought smooth-surfaced, brownish black ceramics to light with vingertip markings. Their speciality were the slender "tulip beaker", S-shaped,with a funnel-like neck and narrow bottom. The supply wares were distinctedly divisioned. Bottles had horizontal perforated handles, the smaller amphorae were spherical at the belly, while dishes come in a pelvic shape, but artefacts used for cooking are rarely found, notwithstanding the occurrence of flat earthen discs for frying.

Stone tools come by as macroliths from blades and flakes, resulting in the polished flint axes, narrow-topped with an oval transversal edge and trapezoidal, or in triangular, convex-sided arrow points. Fortified enclosures on hill tops or on the borders of lakes and along rivers, encircled by palissades and a moat would hint on emphasis on the corporate identity.

The houses were oblong and rectangular, also surrounded by a ditch. The dead were disposed in pits, single and multiple buried in flexed position, however in two Belgian sites, one in Bosvoorde and the other in Ottenburg, in the Walloon province of Brabant, traces of cremation and sepulchres in caverns were found.