Product Description
SEE MORE EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC TOOLS
To date, this is our finest collection of tools we have offered of the European Neolithic people of the Funnel-Necked Beaker Pottery Culture. The site these were all collected from is on the Isle of Funen in Denmark. They were fashioned and utilized between 6300 and 4800 years ago.
Included in this collection is a large core-struck blade, a borer, a side scraper, a double concave scraper, a BEAUTIFUL tranchet axe, and a large tool core that was used to knock off flakes from which, the flake tools were made. The tranchet axe alone is a remarkable neolithic artifact and amazingly, is complete and undamaged. The tool core is not used up and more flakes could have been struck from it to make flake tools. The four scraper tools are FINEST EXAMPLES of each of their designs and types. There are no junk pieces in this collection. Every specimen is the finest of their respective types!
Original ground minerals and sediment are still intact in hinge fractures - an indicator ONLY seen in AUTHENTIC specimens. This fine set represents supreme examples of workmanship of a skilled tool maker from the earliest of north Europe's farming society. Genuine tools from the Funnel-Necked Beaker Pottery Culture are seldom available for public sale and represent an excellent opportunity to acquire a genuine stone tool artifact from some of the world's first farming peoples!
HISTORY
The earliest food-producing communities of Northern Europe belonged to the Funnel-Necked Beaker Pottery Culture. This culture existed from 4300 BC to 2800 BC, in the Northern-most region of western Europe. The pottery produced by these earliest farmers had a distinctive necked design. The first use of the PLOW, ANIMAL TRACTION and WHEELED TRANSPORT in north-central Europe is attributed to this Neolithic culture. Megalithic chambered tombs were employed and built into long mounds. These mounds made by the Funnel-Necked Beaker peoples still stand today in many parts of north Europe.
Farming in northern and central Europe differed from that of the more temperate southern regions of Europe, the Middle East and north Africa. The harsh winters required crops to be sown in the Spring as opposed to the Fall for the latter. Woodland grazing in the north meant more emphasis on the raising of cattle and pigs compared to the herds of sheep and goats popular in the south.
Neolithic settlements were typically small in population with only about forty to sixty people. The wooden longhouse was the main type of building which housed both people and their livestock. Postholes are all that remain today leaving burials and ritual stone structures as the only remnants of this period. Neolithic burials were either individual or communal. The communal burials were housed in large megalithic structures which were then covered with earth creating a giant mound. Offerings of stone tools, pottery and ornaments were often included in burials.
The Neolithic people of the Funnel-Necked Beaker Pottery Culture represented the first farming and stock-herding society in Northern Europe.