page_title: Ertebølle culture
section_title: Tool kit
hierarchical_section_title: Ertebølle culture / Tools and art / Tool kit
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Skivyxa, funnen i Östergötland English: A flake axe Östergötland, Sweden
context_page_description: The Ertebølle culture is the name of a hunter-gatherer and fisher, pottery-making culture dating to the end of the Mesolithic period. The culture was concentrated in Southern Scandinavia, but genetically linked to strongly related cultures in Northern Germany and the Northern Netherlands. It is named after the type site, a location in the small village of Ertebølle on Limfjorden in Danish Jutland. In the 1890s, the National Museum of Denmark excavated heaps of oyster shells there, mixed with mussels, snails, bones and bone, antler and flint artifacts, which were evaluated as kitchen middens, or refuse dumps. Accordingly, the culture is less commonly named the Kitchen Midden. As it is approximately identical to the Ellerbek culture of Schleswig-Holstein, the combined name, Ertebølle-Ellerbek is often used. The Ellerbek culture is named after a type site in Ellerbek, a community on the edge of Kiel, Germany.
  In the 1960s and 1970s another closely related culture was found in the Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands, near the village Swifterbant and the former island of Urk.
context_section_description: The flintstone industry evolved a high and unified standard with small and flake axes, long lithic flakes (knives) and arrow heads. However, tools of many materials were in use: wood prongs and points, antler parts, carved bone tools.
caption: flake axe
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