Swifterbant is the name of the type sites of the Swifterbant culture, a Late Mesolithic and Neolithic culture located in the Netherlands, and including the wetland regions between Antwerp, Belgium and Hamburg, Germany between ~5000-3400 BC. The sites components show strong similarities to both the Neolithic communities of LBK and the Ertebolle-Ellerbeck Late Mesolithic culture.
Swifterbant is actually several sites, small encampments located on the levees of a creek in The Netherlands. The sites date between ~5700-4100 BC, in three separate phases; each represents a small seasonal fishing camp, inhabited during the summer. At least two small cemeteries have been identified, and evidence for domestic cattle and pig were identified. Bones of beaver, red deer, otter, and wild boar were discovered.
Material culture like pots and other artifacts from the LBK were adopted fairly early by the Swifterbant fisher-hunter-gatherers, but research conducted by Cappers and Raemaekers suggests that it wasn't until about 4300 BC when they added small-scale cereal farming to their repertoire. The site assemblages include naked barley and emmer wheat and possibly einkorn as well. The evidence for local cereal cultivation at Swifterbant includes pollen diagrams that include cereal remains, and use-wear analysis which has been interpreted as sickle gloss. Opium poppy was found at the Brandwijk-Kerkhof site, although the precise role in the culture is unclear at present.
Cereal production at the site occurred ~4300-4100 BC, although Swifterbant neighbors had adopted cereal farming approximately 1,000 years earlier. Swifterbant culture's successful reliance on European Mesolithic hunting-fishing-gathering strategies most likely delayed the adoption of LBK farming activities, an interesting turn on how we understand of the process of domestication.
Swifterbant was excavated by the University of Groningen.
Swifterbant Sites: Urk-E4, P14, Schokkerhaven, Swifterbant, Hazendonk, Bergschenhoek, Brandwijk-Kerkhof
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the European Mesolithic, the Guide to the Linearbandkeramik, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Cappers, R. T. J. and D. C. M. Raemaekers 2008 Cereal cultivation at Swifterbant? Current Anthropology 49(3):385-402.
Louwe Kooijmans, Leendert P. 2007 The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin. Proceedings of the British Academy 144:287-309.
Louwe Kooijmans, Leendert P. 1980 Archaeology and Coastal Change in the Netherlands. Pp. 106-133 in Archaeology and Coastal Change, edited by F.H. Thompson. Society of Antiquaries, London. Free download
Out, Welmoed A. 2008 Growing habits? Delayed introduction of crop cultivation at marginal Neolithic wetland sites. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17(Supplement 1):131-138. Free download
Out, Welmoed A. 2007 Neolithisation at the site Brandwijk-Kerkhof, the Netherlands: natural vegetation, human impact and plant food subsistence. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17(1):25-39. Free download
Raemaekrs, D. C. M. 1999. The articulation of a 'New Neolithic'. The meaning of the Swifterbant Culture for the proces of neolithisation in the western part of the North European Plain (4900-3400 BC). Ph.D. thesis Leiden University. Published as Archaeological Studies Leiden University 3.
Thorpe, I.J. 1999. The Atlantic Fringe. pp 41-58 in In The Origins of Agriculture in Europe. Routledge.
