The Ertebølle-Ellerbeck culture is the name given to the Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic communities of northern Europe, dated between 3800-3100 BC, consisting of fisher-hunter-gatherers who adopted pottery but not agriculture from their neighbors. The Ertebølle people were very adept at marine animal exploitation, including building fish weirs, and hunted and gathered a wide range of animals, including wild pig, fish and bird species, and marine mammals.
Cemetery sites assigned to the Ertebølle culture near such communities as Skateholm and Vedbaek are considered to have the earliest evidence of social ranking in Europe. Several of the Ertebolle sites also have early evidence of dog domestication, among the earliest in Europe.
Many of the Ertebølle sites (such as the type site Ertebølle in Sweden, ca 5800-5100 BP) were built on enormous middens of oyster shell, indicating shellfish were at least a quite substantial part of the Ertebølle diet. Peter Rowley-Conwy has argued that it was the decline in shellfish that convinced the Ertebølle to finally adopt agriculture.
Ertebølle Sites: Skateholm I and II (Sweden), Aggersund, Tybrind Vig, Ertebølle, Vedbaek (all in Denmark), Swifterbant (Netherlands)
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the European Mesolithic, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Mithen, Steven J. 1994. The Mesolithic Age. pp. 79-135 in Prehistoric Europe: An Illustrated History, edited by Barry Cunliffe. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Rowley-Conwy, Peter. 1984. The Laziness of the Short-Distance Hunter: The Origins of Agriculture in Western Denmark. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3:300-324.
