Click the image to see the items labeled
Click the image to see the items labeled
Early spring is a time for planting flax, while mid-spring is a time for planting some forms of wheat. Driving much of their caloric intake from cereal crops, the Linear Pottery Culture would dedicate a significant portion of their time and resources to planting. The soil must be aerated and made soft for the seeds, while weeds must be picked. The soil must have seed cast upon it, and careful attention must be paid to the freshly cast seed to ensure that animals did not eat it.
While the planting details have been lost in time, likely significant rituals and religious practices surrounded the act. If a blight of fungus or insects destroyed a crop, there was always the possibility of an entire village being ruined. The fertility of the soil and the direct impact of the impending harvest upon the lives of the villagers likely caused them to pay great importance to planting.
Neolithic Farmer casts seeds in the early morning
In this scene, we find our villagers dressed for springtime planting. They wear layers that can be removed as they become warm and then added again as the sun sinks low on the horizon. They are currently dressed for the midday. A small bowl may be filled with seeds to be cast while a deer antler tiller is used to dig up the seeds' soil. Both are barefoot as they will be walking in freshly tilled soil all day, not a place for footwear. Their hair has been left long to block the sun, and since the act of casting seeds does not usually call for hair to be tied up.
1 - Clay Pot: The Linear Pottery Culture is named for the incised lines found so frequently upon their clay pottery. Small clay bowls and other more unique and specialty purposed clay dishware have been found throughout Linear Pottery Culture settlements with such a frequency and similarity that progressions in the spread of the culture can be inferred by examining the changes in the pottery style over time.
2 - Feather Adornments: Feathers are found as hair decoration throughout the world. While no direct evidence links the Linear Pottery Culture to their use, it can be supposed that such decoration may have been worn. A reproduction can be seen here
3 - Bone Bead Necklace: A necklace of beads made from the bones of animals and sometimes people. The string is attached with a string of fiber thread or a leather thong. Such beads are quite commonplace throughout prehistory.
4 - Antler Bead Necklace: A necklace of beads made from the antlers of deer. The string is attached with a string of fiber thread or a leather thong. Such beads are quite commonplace throughout prehistory, though often clay and stone survive while antlers decompose.
5 - Roe Deer Loincloth: The loincloth is perhaps the oldest and most widely used garment of humanity, found at one time or another in nearly every human culture on Earth, and even worn today. Usually made from a short strip of any flexible material tucked into the front and back of a waist cord. Neolithic loincloths were often leather and had lengths as short as perhaps 50cm (20”) to as long as 200cm (80”). This loincloth was made from roe deer hide. A reproduction can be seen here.
6 - Ochre Body Stain: Determining body paint used by a culture is ancient as the Linear Pottery Culture is very difficult, aside from the very few examples of what might be depicted body paint from figurines found. Examining said figurines and their possible colorant, it is possible to surmise that red ocher may have been used upon the skin. Depicted is a proposed usage of the ocher, though it is only loosely based upon colorant found on some figurines.
7 - Leather Leggings: Leggings are made from one or more strips of leather and held up by the waist cord. Leggings protect the wearer from the elements and may even be worn under a dress. In many ways, leggings are what would become pants many thousands of years later. Leggings to not cover the groin, so a breechcloth or loincloth is often worn for this purpose. A reproduction can be seen here.
8 - Leather anklet: On no significant evidence points to simple adornments, such as a braided leather anklet, we can surmise from examining more contemporary lithic cultures that such minor details are often present, if not adequately recorded in the archaeological record. It is human nature to decorate.
9 - Barefoot: Unless the temperature or the environment explicitly prevented it, Neolithic people likely spent most of their time barefoot. Footwear is challenging to craft and wears out very fast, implying that its use would probably be reserved for colder weather or rougher ground.
10 - Body Paint: The body is painted to intimidate an enemy, for ritualistic reasons, or identification of each other. Evidence for body paints is nearly universal throughout the archaeological record for prehistoric cultures for whom figurines and anthropomorphic artwork exists. Bodypaint is also commonplace among contemporary lithic cultures. It may serve religion, status, cultural, and even self-expressive functions. An illustrated example can be found here.
11 - Antler Tip Necklace: A necklace of the tips of deer antlers. The string is attached with a string of fiber thread or a leather thong. reproduction can be seen here.
12 - Leather Wrap Skirt: One of the most common garment forms is a simple leather piece wrapped around the waist, often secured in place with cordage. These can be as simple as a rough hide to as complicated is a well-cut and decorated piece of leather, with paint, shells, and many other additional adornments. Such garments are often depicted on figurines and even recorded and more contemporary lithic cultures worldwide, being nearly as ubiquitous as the loincloth. A reproduction can be seen here.
13 - Deer Antler Soil Tiller: The soil must be broken and made soft, as well as aerated before planting. While this can be done by hand, it's usually done with tools involving a long pole and some pointed end. Pointed sticks and sticks with antlers affixed to their end could be used for such a task. A reproduction can be seen here.
The linear pottery culture is the name given to an early Western European Neolithic culture identified by its common use of impressed lines in its pottery. Sometimes abbreviated LBK, from its German name, Linearbandkeramik, the linear pottery culture flourished along the streams and rivers of Western Europe starting perhaps as early as 5700 B.C.E., and eventually changing sufficiently to be reclassified as another culture around 4500 B.C.E.
Linear Pottery Culture Village - By Alexandra Filipek
Linear Pottery Culture gets its name from the use of lines (and dots) impressed into their pottery's wet clay before firing hard. While impressions into clay can be found in nearly any culture that makes pottery, the Linear Pottery Culture focuses strongly on using this technique. Moreover, these patterns can be found on figurines they made, implying that the design may have been used throughout their culture.
Farming and the domestication of animals are vital properties of the Neolithic revolution, and the Linear Pottery Culture engaged in both. Crops of peas, emmer and einkorn wheat, lentils, and possibly flax were grown. Unlike later cultures, Linear Pottery Culture farming likely involved small farm plots, more akin to extensive gardens, than large scale farming. Crop rotation had not been discovered, resulting in fields needing to be abandoned after a period, or left unused for a time.
Domesticated pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle, from their wild cousins, provided meat, milk (for cheese), wool, and bones(for tools. Interestingly, most early Neolithic people were lactose intolerant and could not comfortably consume milk after adolescence. The invention of cheese from milk may have helped with this as cheese is more easily digested by lactose-intolerant people than milk, and provides a rich source of nutritious food.
Hunting, fishing, and gathering were essential components of the Linear Pottery Culture. They appear to have accounted for a much larger food intake than agriculture, compared to later Neolithic cultures (1). Hunted animals included red deer, roe deer, wild boar, aurochs, red squirrel, fox, bear, beaver, and many smaller game. Various birds were hunted for meat and feathers, such as the barn owl, dove, and duck. Hunting involved the use of the bow and arrow but also trapping. We can speculate that all genders participated in hunting. Fish, mollusks, and amphibians could be gathered or hunted from lakes, creeks, and rivers. Catfish, Atlantic Salmon were likely important fish due to their large size and prevalence. Standard fishing methods involved barbed spears, cast nets, weirs, traps, and ice fishing.
While very little evidence of violence exists for the Linear Pottery Culture, there have been some indications of palisade walls and wounds consistent with violence. On the one hand, piecing together such details from as far as 7500 years ago can be quite challenging. On the other, territorial violence is relatively common among most human cultures. Many examples of possible violence, including possible cannibalism, have been considered. Today, this topic remains an open question. Likely, violence occurred at least infrequently.
Linear Pottery Culture longhouses were quite sophisticated structures for their time. Longhouses often had wattle and daub walls, thatched roofs, and even stables for livestock in the latter half of the period. While longhouse sizes varied by location and time, a typical construction might be 40m (131') long and 6m (20') wide, and a height of 6m (20') at the center of its thatched gabled roof. The roof would nearly extend to the ground and was supported upon dozens of large wooden poles, each buried in the ground and facing up. The vertical poles would run the length of the house in two rows, one on each side. Sometimes, a center row would also be used. The walls would be constructed of wattle and daub.
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Artwork by Alexandra Filipek Stacey Abidi Ishtar (website Owner)